Great Marketing, Dubious Art – People really will buy anything.
A few years ago we saw a play about a man who bought a completely white canvas. The comedy was created in watching the man attempt to justify to his family and friends why he spent a ridiculous amount of money on a blank canvas. The answer, of course, had everything to do with him being duped by the dealer’s marketing and nothing to do with the intrinsic value of the artwork. Thank goodness such nonsense only happens in works of fiction! Or does it?
We happened across a web site today where Sala, a young “artist” from
Zurich
, is selling one thousand paintings. Here is the premise:
- Get 1,000 identical white canvases
- Paint a big block number on each canvas 1 – 1000
- Create a weird, mathematically based pricing scheme
- Offer the “paintings” for sale on a web site
- Find 1,000 suckers to buy your “art”
- No, this is not a joke.
View the One Thousand Paintings Web Site:
http://www.onethousandpaintings.com
Just for fun, we looked up painting number “300.” Underneath the image of the painting it read, “This is a computer generated image. The real painting looks different.” Further down the page we were told, “300 (three hundred) is the natural number following two hundred and ninety-nine and preceding three hundred and one.” Such an artistic statement!
According to Sala’s web site he has sold 588 paintings so far. In addition, Sala’s “art” has generated serious buzz. He is being written about, talked about, and blogged about. Sala’s web site informs us that his “work” will be featured in Wired magazine’s December issue. Marketing guru Seth Godin says that Sala’s marketing is so, “classically, perfectly viral.” Sala’s marketing must work very well, even Seth forked over some hard earned cash for number “552.” He’s even threatened to donate number 552 to the MOMA. We suspect the MOMA would honor number 552 with a place of honor. . .too bad they couldn’t assemble a traveling exhibition of the whole collection…they could teach art museum visitors nationwide how to count to 1,000.
Enjoy some marketing advice from Seth Godin:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com
I can see the future of modern “art” now. A multitude of preposterous gimmicks cry out, simply asking for someone to bring them to fruition. How about painting the alphabet….no only twenty six paintings…but what about the Chinese alphabet? How about the entire dictionary? Keep yourself busy for years while stamping out illiteracy! Why work so hard? Let’s just produce 1,000 white canvases! I mean….why even have to actually paint them?
So why do we rant and rave about one thousand paintings in a serious art space? Simple, serious art collectors and artists wouldn’t look twice at Sala’s “art.” But serious artists should take a second and third look at Sala’s marketing. He has created a phenomenon that people apparently want to be a part of. It’s all marketing. Indeed, people seem to be buying the story, rather than actually buying art. We don’t write today to give specific examples or marketing steps, but rather to point out that if a man can actually make hundreds of thousands of dollars selling numbers, think of the possibilities that could arise out of marketing real art.
One of the important numbers to focus on as you market in the Internet age is inbound links. We’ll be providing more information on this in the future, but an inbound link as a link from another web site to yours. Think of each inbound link as a “vote” for your site. The more links “votes” you have, the more serious the search engines consider your site. Building inbound links is an ongoing, time-consuming process…and one that should be part of your marketing plan. Since Sala’s project is unique and has generated a lot of buzz, he has garnered a fairly large number of inbound links. Google reports that he has 361 links. By contrast, Richard Schmid’s inbound link count appears to be only 42. You may verify a site’s Google link count by typing “site:www.yourwebsiteaddress.com” into Google’s search bar.
Sala’s Link Count:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=link%3Aonethousandpaintings.com
Richard Schmid’s Link Count:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=link%3Arichardschmid.com
We’ve made a game of it, poking fun at Sala’s project, but he has some lessons for the serious artist who wonders how to get more traffic to his or her site.
That’s my view, post a reply and send me yours.
Sincerely,
Clint Watson
Software Craftsman and Art Fanatic
PS: We could use some spare change, anybody interested one-upping Sala and marketing one million paintings? You make the art and I’ll create the website and handle the orders . . .
PPS: “There’s a sucker born every minute” (credited to P.T. Barnum, although nobody is sure who really said it)
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There was a time when you could point at a work of art and know it was a work of art. Things were clearer way back when. Strictly speaking, I'm not opposed to many art movements that have occurred in history. After all, we got some very fine artwork to look back on if you take the time to look for it. There have been a multitude of proficiently trained artists making inspired pieces. Without having to think very hard, there is the Mona Lisa, the Pieta, The David, the Sistine Chapel and on and on. One movement inspired the next or was created because it was lacking something the newer generation of painters needed. Or there were some nuts in the bunch who managed to attain the eye of the populace and get their work classified as ART. No matter what side of the argument you're on as to what art is, you have to admit there has been a constant surge of creativity since man(and woman)walked into the sunshine from their caves.
You just have to look into the caves to see what I mean.
The caveman wasn't deliberately "making art" as such, he was recording his world. As limited as it was, it was his world. Not to be verbose and take up too much cyborspace, my point, If I have one, is nothing has changed. "artists"
(in perentesies) are still recording their world. Some use the systems and techniques of old and others use modern tools.
Whether it's art or not is going to be debated ad infinitum.
Which is good. Since it keeps us creating and causing us to re-think things and satisfies the age old quest of mankind (womankind)to keep searching our souls for the exquist thing we call ART.