value is the key to sales, originality is the key to value.

Todays lecture was spent mostly learning about the differences between art sales and commercial sales. I also learned about the value of art, and why art should be valued. Lecturer Bepen Bhana helped to explain these ideas, after we viewed an episode of The aprentice UK.

In The aprentice UK both teams (stealth and eclipse) had to choose two artists of which they would hang and sell their works in a small gallery. When presented with their selection of artists , I felt that each team wanted to steer towards the artist which made the most asthetically pleasing work. The work which was not weird, or too out of the usual. The program constantly stereotyped art as a crazy, and expensive. Something which doesn't make a lot of sense either. This was because a lot of people in each of the teams didn't seem to quite get it, making fun of the photographer who had captured images of fish over curvy bodies. They made it look like rubbish too. The indian man remarked that there was a picture of a blank space and a cello, and he could buy all three of those items down the road for a few quid. Because the fashion photographer was selling her lip portraits for such a high price, it also stereo typed art as money. However, not all art is money. Often people do work for free because they feel that putting a price on art soils it completely.

The value of art ranges vastly from nothing to everything. As in the program, they portrayed several photographs of lips, all vastly overpriced according to the boss, talking to his apprentices. It's a photograph, yet nobody ever spoke of how many photographs there were in this set. was it a set? were they a one off? In terms of value, I would say that any item with fewer copies made would be much more valued, such as an original painting. This is because it has created rarity within the item. There is only one. Photographs are often not as valued because you could initially make thousands of copies.

the apprentices seemed to have no clue about the value of art, assuming that the images that were prettier had more face value. This is definatly not so, as the other team sold more images of dead fish, than they did the lucious lips. there were many photographs of the lips, with no variety. Yes, they were different in terms of colour, but they were not original within themselfs in terms of images. For example, if there were many lips and one eye for sale, which do you think would sell first? originality is often the key to value. And making something more valuable can lead to better sales.