7 art community insider insights revealed
Could there possibly be a good enough reason to buy art today? I guess the question that you’d ask next is why you buy anything at all.
Most of our purchases come down to the highly debatable need vs. want. We buy things because we need them and they somehow impact our foundational survival. We also buy things because we want them. Ownership of certain items satisfies a deep-seated need or passion because the markets won again and tugged on our vulnerable and sensitive heartstrings. We also buy because we’re watching what other people have and think if we have those things too we will be like them, be happier, or acceptable.
The basis of our purchasing decisions is strictly emotional. We get this feeling in our souls and come alive with giddy, connectedness, relief, or any number of feelings that wash over us when we imagine owning something new. We play out whole scenarios about how those items will somehow add to our lives. This narrative triggers our minds with the psychological perception that this feeling signifies a purchase is “worthy of my money”.
Simply put, we desire and acquire.
So where does art buying fit into all of this? And is there really a “should” factor here?
There is, and it begins at the point of satisfaction.
1 You Should Buy Art Because it is Satisfying
Satisfaction. We need it, uncompromisingly.
What does satisfaction do for the human soul exactly?
Feelings of satisfaction are interconnected with wellbeing. When we feel loved, comforted, content and gratified oxytocin is released into our bloodstream. We feel amazing. This is why a hug, kiss, or cuddling session can relax us so much we feel like new people. Oxytocin causes us to have an elevated mood leading to more optimism, more laughing, smiling, good choices, and overall joy and happiness. Even viewing beautiful things like flowers or the ocean waves lapping at the shore can release the calming and mood-boosting effects of oxytocin. Our quality of life is immediately impacted by the release of oxytocin and the more this oxytocin release is attached to life-affirming, self-esteem boosting decisions, the better we are for it.
Some from a purely pleasure-centric, hedonist space art buying just feels freaking good. Part of this good feeling comes from the innate ability of art as a vehicle of connection. Art is pulled from the collective conscious. All of the art ever created will reach someone who is also in alignment with that same energy.
Van Gogh’s “The Scream” illustrates this concept perfectly. Let me explain.
Van Gogh had an emotional Post-Impressionism style. The Scream evokes tension, fear, stress, shock, darkness, melancholy, and or a variety of other responses. This sense of validation we get from a work of art whether the themes are joyous, abstract, or morbid ease us and provide a sense of, “someone sees me”. We feel less alone and thereby connected and satisfied. A basic human need is connection usually through community, and art has the uncanny power to bridge human beings together regardless of the difference in perception of that work.
You might want to check out the immersive Van Gogh Museum, Beyond Van Gogh, active in Miami through October 2021. It’s packed with floor-to-ceiling simulated projections of Van Gogh’s most essential works. There is even a drive-thru option.
Beyond the connection points art establishes, the satisfaction aspect of an art purchase relates to a Barclays report on treasure assets. A treasure asset (TA) is a purchase such as art or an MLB collectible that provides an emotional ROI. We feel a sense of euphoria or joy by buying it.
The report found that most purchases like that of art are purely emotional, 82% of people bought these TA’s for enjoyment, and 23% purchase TA’s for investment purposes. We want to own exclusive, beautiful things. In a world where acquiring is equal to status and stuff is equal to importance people buy art because they almost “have to” to feel good. The high and the feeling of a status boost garnered from treasure asset purchases
2 Buying Art Begets More And Better Art
The economics of supply and demand is valuable to competition and innovation because of the open market which powers the world. How industries move grow and evolve has so much to do with the revenues created within them and the cravings we have to enter into a particular industry and doing something unique and distinct. As human beings, we sometimes fail to recognize that our competition is not other people, but ourselves. This misinformed idea helps drive the evolutions we see in any discipline.
With regard to art, when artists and collectors alike see a market demand for a certain type of art, heads turn in that direction. Brushes begin swishing around in the water, pencils skip along with free sketch pads, canvases get larger, and clay takes on a novel and obscure shapes. We all want to be a part of the revolution in our own way, thus if this art sells creators want to try their hand at iconic ink blots or the carefree scribbles of Basquiat, and the textured realism of Van Gogh.
We buy art to add more fuel to the vehicle of art. It’s the same innovation we see in the making of automobiles when concept cars garner fanfare and set the next stage in car manufacturing. The next level in car-making is what car brand can produce the most innovative and original SuperCar. Cars and RVs begin to fly, float on water, become fully self-driving, electric, include single car garages, rooftop decks with hot tubs, helipads, and helicopters, integrate luxurious amenities and features from 4k TVs, game systems, the ability to drive sideways, and fully reclining. All of these features are actually genuine SuperCar features, and they get more novel than this!
Similarly, buying art pushes artists to make greater works, to challenge themselves into the expansion that is within. Buying art stretches the discipline and the artists alike and in so doing evolves the entire human race. The collective mind sharing in a particular experience of art becomes more conscious and aware. So not only is buying art helpful to economic vitality, it creates a limitless, fearless opportunity for the artists and the progression of human creativity and intelligence. As a byproduct of your support for artists, if they win financially so do you.
3 Art impacts mental and emotional well being
Vase for Chagall by Andrea Dasha Reich
You’ve probably seen the use of art as young as grade school. And even before you ever stepped into your kindergarten class, happily toting your backpack full of colored pencils, watercolors, and magic markers your parents were encouraging your creativity with Crayola art sets and artist easels–just not on their pristine white living room walls. Can you recall the freedom and enthusiasm you had when coloring outside of the lines was the only way to do art?
That enjoyment was completely intentional. Especially considering the energy we had as children, art allowed us to channel that energy while also cultivating our mental and emotional wellness. We learned early on the meditative and healing value of our before we were conscious of it. You may recall turning to a sketchbook and drawing book whenever you wanted to relax, even if you didn’t call it relaxing.
There was a reason for that.
A 2010 Australian Psychiatry study by Geraldine Hunter and Ernest Hunter on the power of art as a creative recovery tool for mental health identifies art as beneficial as a tool for “community participation and social cohesion”. This cohesion is assistance to one’s mental health and because individual mental health is interconnected with the collective “social and emotional wellbeing” arts influence is poignant. Whole states are using art in the promotion of country-wide mental health initiatives (Dyer & Hunter)
Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colours flowers, so does art colour life.
― John Lubbock
Theresa Van Lith, Margot Schofield, and Patricia Fenner found in a critical evidence-based study for Disability and Rehabilitation Journal of art-based practices that art has the ability to assist in the development of “self-discovery, self-expression, relationships, and social identity”. There is a compounding benefit when these elements can be nurtured and grown through the use of the art, applied in a direct sense. Imagine all the development art has created for the collective without these considered boundaries. The scholars also cited the arts’ notable contribution to mental health recovery (Van Lith, Schofield, & Fenner).
Because of the correlation between art and the improvement of mental wellbeing art courses have been introduced and study for their impact. Secker, Loughran, Heydinrych, and Kent studied 29 introductory art courses and their participants and found there were “significant improvements in well-being and social inclusion”. Not only that but those students taking the courses self-reported their experiences as positive and said this experience was directly related to their participation in the art courses (Secker, Loughran, Heydinrych, & Kent).
It is clear art is up to something serious. Buying art links right back into this positive feedback loop.
4 Upgrading your decor with one-of-a-kind work is an awesome reason to buy art
The fastest way to upgrade a space and the people within the space is by changing the energy in the room. The energy flowing in and out of a space is thanks to the colors, materials, and placement of those. Looking at the elements of Feng shui and qi we will break down some of the best kinds of art and colors that will benefit your energy and overall wellbeing.
Feng shui is an ancient Chinese practice defined as the balancing act between the arrangement of things in our homes and their correlation to the natural order. When these are harmony, so are we.
Feng Shui expert Anjie Cho breaks down Feng shui principles and arts ability to raise energy and vibrations in the home on the Spruce.
On its most fundamental level, we can break down feng shui to its basest form. Feng and shui together mean wind water. When seeing this it can be equated to when we flow like water, we are like the wind. We go where we are needed where the energy calls, without fight or resistance. The Chinese practice of feng shui views it from a sustainability perspective, humans need the breath of life to be and connectedness to nature. Feng shui is the bridge that integrates both of these to the benefit of our nourishment and with it, we begin to enter awareness of life force energy or qi (Cho). With this awareness and mindfulness of the way we put art into our spaces and use the energy of certain colors and materials, we can lay down the urgency and surrender to the quiet and peace.
The very fact that you love the art we purchase is a massive contribution to the energy that will develop out of it within your home. This concept is true within the art of minimalism too, keep with you what you love, what serves a function in your life. This very rule of thumb prevents the unhelpful emotions of chronic stress and worry. You might get stressed simply over having too many things, especially things that need other things just to function like a laptop needs the internet or electronics need batteries or electricity to remain in power.
Cho suggests giving your spaces room to breathe, every inch doesn’t need art on it, this she says allows energy to rest. Different mediums and mixed media art are essential as well. Bronze, gold, black or white frames, spherical art, rectangular, grand, and tiny all charge different energy into your home. The selection of art per room should be left to the individual the space belongs to, as what can give your energy might zap the energy of someone else.
5 Art often spearheads the growth of movements
Social and political movements garner attention off the backs of prolific photographers and street artists with an eye for time-stopping moments. BLM, COVID-19, Women’s movement PRIDE, Civil rights movement, and other international movements and protests each have hoisted artists to the tops of the art stratosphere simply for being present, capturing, and or turning a global experience into a work of art that supersedes the end of a protest, lives on when the pandemic has died, and echos into the history books of civilization.
In the Sociological Forum, Jaqueline Adams cites the use of art in social movements and how it informs social movements literature. She found that art plays a more significant role in social movements that have a pro-democracy characteristic. The art is the heartbeat of that movement and its language, and thereby important to its life and voice. Movements that centered on art help to define the movement, garner resources to sustain it, communicate information about those involved, cultivate the most useful and influential human emotions and symbolize the identity of those within the movement from the mark of membership to the commitment of an individual to the movement (Adams). Art is essentially the DNA of social movements and the stamp of approval that the movement took place.
In Lyman Chaffee’s book on Political Protest and Street Art: Popular Tools for Democratization he states the origination point of communication as multifaceted and therefore lending itself to multifaceted transmission points used by individuals, groups, and organizations as well as governments. We communicate to share opinions, desires, basic needs, and ideas. Chaffee highlights a point of conjecture where although society views mass communication as being high tech, coming from the top down, some of the most prolific forms of mass communication actually come from street artist birthed from grass-roots movements and groups by which this art that is produced and spread about is politicized whether street art of graphics worldwide and in some countries, it is the preferred and traditional form of communication as a tool of information and persuasion (Chaffee).
Art’s role in social movements is transformative said Melody Milbrandt. Some of the main functions of art in a social movement are the umbrella function of metamorphisis which branches into the promotion of social change, empowerment, deeper commitment from the public towards a given issue such as criminal justice reform. Further, art serves to bring balance and harmony amongst those spearheading the movements and assist in communicating ideas to the members from values to ideas and outward into the collective watching the movement.
This then helps the movement share the goals and bring the history of the event into time as the stories that develop from every action bring moments into the story of the history of the movement that echoes into time. Art informs the movement’s energy and emotion as well as its aesthetic, giving the movement the power to dictate its reason for being, and the voice by which it carries its values such that no outsider can formally dictate the movement’s personality. Art helps pull a social movement back to its origin point and story and is a reference for those who believe the stories being told about a movement are or are not authentic to it (Milbrandt).
As a people, we rely on art for communication, more than we can ever know. If we look back even as early as this year we will see how this communication has moved communities and civilizations through difficult eras, public health crises, and national crises. We talk about this more in our 2021 art trends post.
6 Pay the artist to create work exclusively for you
There is nothing like commissioned work from an artist. It’s incredibly important to the ecosystem that makes up the art world. Not only does the artist gain monetarily but it brings the cycle of human creativity full circle. It’s a balancing act between trust, visualization, and creativity. To be specifically chosen from the huge pool of artists to provide a one-off cannot be understated.
When I paint, I never think of selling. People fail to understand that we paint in order to experiment and to develop ourselves as we strive for greater heights.
― Edvard Munch
You can have an artist make anything you can imagine, that is obviously within the artist’s wheelhouse. It stands then, that what you are asking that artist to create may one hand be like works the artist has already created but also leave room for the artist to stretch themselves. It certainly would not make much sense to go to a sculptor and ask for an oil painting or vise versa. Certainly do not count an artist out because what you envision may not have been done before, after all, that is the point of the commissioned piece. It will be something that doesn’t exist in this form and never will again.
When commissioning large-scale work the process would work a bit differently. You can use a curator or art consultant through an art gallery, especially the one whose curated work you prefer. The curator will help align you with the right artist for the job, including providing access to the artist portfolios who fit the commissioned work best.
There will be contracts drawn up, constant and open communication along with the commission timeframe, and agreement between you and the artists, an experience so unique it cannot be duplicated. Pricing will vary by size, medium, and artist’s name. For a point of reference look at the works, you enjoy by the artist and the selling price. There may be additional fees tacked for the commissioned nature of the piece but these numbers would give you a ballpark figure.
The beauty of commissioned work is allowing the order to be an open canvas. Leave plenty of room for the artist to be themselves with minimal instruction or rigidity. You of course want to communicate the main ideas or points you want to hit, and even be clear about where the painting will belong and what energy you’d like the painting to exude. From there, trust the artist to be an artist and give you back a masterpiece.
If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.
― Marc Chagall
7 Automatic Authentication
Buying art from artists at local art walks, fairs, and gallery events is a perfect opportunity for supporting artists who aren’t dead. You don’t ever have to worry about whether the work you’ve collected is truly one of the pieces your favorite artist created. Not only is your art purchase doubtless but you get to meet the artist face to face a lot of times and have the satisfaction (there’s that word again) of knowing your financial support is reaching the artist directly and not some invisible estate director.
There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
–Henri Matisse
It may even be true that we oversimplify the world of the artist. We think what they do is simple. Imagine that supporting an artist directly speaks into the soul of that artist as validation that you know creating is not easy. Some artists lose their heads attempting to get that sketch, painting, or graphic just right. There is so much to creating and designing that is often left to the imagination.
To support the artist is to honor their creative process and remind them, they aren’t alone. Much like Henri Mattise stated, “There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.”
When all that is left… is art
The artist’s heaviest task is originality. But before that task is the even heavier task of remaining authentic by losing oneself utterly. We buy art because we connect with the extraordinary that grips us by the soul and asks us to look deeper. Sometimes we buy art because it captured the ordinary in the most minimalist way possible or illustrated the complexities of happiness or depression in a statute of bronze, silver, or blown glass.
When I am in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing.
–Jackson Pollock
Art is collective introspection. It is the boundaries that keep humanity from going completely off the rails. We buy art in support of this truth. When we buy art we feed it, we grow it, we nourish it, and the artist who gives us these gifts.