Why is art expensive?

Art has been an important companion to humans, perhaps from our very own creation. We all have a need to possess an object of beauty or of human creativity. These objects can be paintings, sculptures, dolls, rocks, wooden logs, whatever your heart may fancy. We are certain to be drawn to objects that helps us recollect feelings and emotions from our past or from our fantasies.

The tricky business of evaluating art in terms of money, boils down to how much a viewer is willing to pay for the creation and creativity of a certain object. The object itself is not what is on sale, but the talent and the time it takes for an artist to produce what one desires.

To understand why some art objects are more expensive than others, I compare in this article, bobble heads with the cartoon sculptures I make. You will discover that materials and processes in making both figurines make great differences in their prices and artistic evaluation.

Understanding the differences

I was surprised when one day a friend told me my sculptures were too expensive; he compared my sculptures with bobble heads and told me he could get 10 bobble heads for the price of one of my sculptures. Indeed he's right, bobble heads are cheap compared to my cartoon sculptures, but, why are bobble heads cheaper? Are bobble heads art objects?

My company's name is Your Own Sculpture. I make cartoon sculptures of people who love art and cartoons alike. In this article I aim to compare my cartoon sculptures with bobble heads figurines. The differences between materials, making process and art evaluation between bobble heads and your own sculpture should help us understand why one is more expensive than the other.

Materials

I begin by focusing on the materials used when making bobble head. Bobble heads were made of paper maché the first time they became "a hit" back in 1960's. The first bobble head ever "invented," however, was made in the 1800's. This material was then changed to ceramic. Now-a-days, bobble heads can be made out of pretty much anything: from carton to paper to clay, to ceramic, and plastic. High quality bobble heads, produced for sale purposes, are made out of poly resin. Poly resin in its natural state is commonly known as pine sap. Synthetic resin in simple terms, is plastic. This material is cheap, durable, and easy to work with. Your Own sculpture on the other hand, is made of newclay, which is a water based clay reinforced with nylon. Water based clays are not as strong as poly resin, and they are easy to work with only if you know a bit about pottery or have a talent in manipulating it into a desired shape.

The making process of bobble heads is less stressful than the work it requires to make a cartoon sculpture of clay. Poly resin becomes flexible when heat is applied to it. This makes this material great for placing it into molds. Hence, to make thousands of bobble heads as collector items, a bobble head maker uses molds to replicate his/her work. This means that only one "sculpture" is required to make a mold that will allow other bobble heads to be reproduced or duplicated.

Opposite to that is Your Own Sculpture. My cartoon sculptures have to be hand crafted because newclay is a water based clay. This sort of material isn't great for molding because of its tendency to dry out inside the molds. For this reason, to make your own sculpture requires more time, talent, and dedication. Each piece, body, hands, head....shoes, is made the instance the artist requires it. Whereas the makers of bobble heads have the advantage of having these pieces already made! Your own sculpture is also unique in that the body is customized to your desires, not customized to what the mold desires! With this I mean I do exactly everything my client requests. The picture of this cartoon sculpture is an example of how customized sculptures should look like. My client wanted her sculpture to show a professional young woman working on her laptop. Her shoes are a representation of my client's favorite shoes and her dress (with hand painted white flowers) is a replica of her favorite dress.

Artistic evaluation

This unique characteristic, or lack of using molds to produce your own sculpture or any other sculpture, makes hand crafted figurines a piece of art, not dolls. By all means, dolls are also an expression of someone's creativity but are not, nevertheless, an expression of artistic abilities or individuality. This concept, or this inability to replicate a piece of art work, is what separates art from just a home decor object. What one pays for when buying a unique entity or piece of art is that: the exclusivity of owning a bit of the talent and the creativity of the artist. Making objects with molds (to replicate work) devalues this concept and this exclusivity.

Conclusion

My opinion is that my cartoon sculptures are of better value than bobble heads, if you are truly looking to invest on Art object. Bobble heads cannot compare to your own sculpture in terms of materials, making process, or artistic value. The makers of bobble heads have only one thing in mind: make the figurines as cheap and as impersonal to maintain low costs and high sales. Someone like me, a creator of sculptures, just wants to make you a beautiful, high quality sculpture. That is art, an object that guarantees to stir up unique feelings and emotions.

To see more of the cartoon sculptures I've been bragging about just visit my website at www.yourownsculpture.com, or just follow this link! I have a blog that's dusting because hardly anyone comes to say hi so by all means, feel free to browse around my site a bit.

These may help you understand a bit more about Art marketing. Please share your knowledge on my blog or guestbook If you buy one or all of these books!!!

Feel free to write down your thoughts about Art and prices. Do you think Art is overpriced and why? Why should Art be cheap?