My mother once hung a pair of ghastly Labrador prints between a Turner and a Hockney, just to annoy my father. It worked too.
They’d been a gift from one of his breathtakingly wealthy American friends. The sort who summered in the Hamptons and believed Labradors in bow ties were the height of sophistication.
My mother took one look, declared that money couldn’t buy taste, and was promptly accused of being out of touch and snobbish. So naturally, she gave the paintings pride of place and every time my father walked past, his eye twitched like he was developing a tic. They stayed up for months. Out of spite.
This, incidentally, is how most charming art businesses go astray. They start strong, quirky oils, eccentric subjects, a cult following. But then they sniff the scent of “luxury” and panic. Out go the strange, brilliant originals. In come foxes in cravats, hedgehogs on bicycles and wallpaper for nihilists.
The thing you must never lose is authorship. That unmistakable stamp of “this could only have come from you.” Luxury collectors don’t need to like the work. If your work could plausibly be churned out by a mildly depressed intern in Shenzhen, you’re finished. People don’t buy luxury because it’s perfect. They buy it because it’s you.
You can fix pricing. You can fix marketing. But once people think you’ve lost your hand, that you’re producing for the market, not from the mind, it’s over.
My mother was right. You can’t buy taste. But you can hang bad taste in the right place and make it a statement.
That, too, is authorship
See you next week
Paul
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