Are you an artist thinking about how to price your work? Are you a potential buyer looking for art that you like but with "affordable" prices? Here are some questions for you to consider:
Does a surgeon entertain questions about why her fees are so high? (No.) Does she allow you to negotiate down her pricing? (No.) One pays a surgeon for her years of expertise and excruciating attention to detail and an ability to deliver results.
Is a musician paid by the hour? (No.) The musician gets paid for the sum total effect of joy and awe their music has on you.
Right. The same applies to all artists and their work. One doesn't pay a painter or a sculptor for the hours they spend working on a piece or solely for the materials that they used. Art isn't an hourly rate kind of career. An artist is paid for the years of experience honing their craft. For fearlessly exploring their unique vision. For their masterful ability to deliver an emotional result that challenges the perspective of the audience. Purchase a work of art and you've invested in that artist's ability to make more work in the future.
If you're a professional artist (or aspiring to be) with highly honed and particular skills, trained in a practice of intense observation and imagination to manifest the marvels inside your brain and to give those to the world, you should not view yourself as anything less than a magical creature that shits diamonds. Don't be afraid to ask what you want for the value you've created.
That said, there's some practical advice about markets and what they will bear. After all, even the surgeon's mad life-and-death skills are somewhat constrained within a marketplace. When Barbra Streisand was charging her concert attendees over $300 in the 90s, people thought she'd gone completely bonkers but today it's a considered a reasonable amount for someone so vocally skilled.
On many gallery websites which offer pricing guidelines for artists, the practical way to price one's work is to add up all the materials and process costs involved and multiply that by 2. Then, figure out a reasonable hourly rate for yourself (???) and multiply that by the number of hours you spent on the work. Then add the two amounts to get a monetary value of the artwork. This formula might work if you’re repetitively cranking out a product but it seems to be a dreadfully soulless way of pricing work that is a one-of-a-kind object. And, it doesn’t figure in the emotional impact of the work or the "magic" that is contained in it. They then suggest that you look at other similar styles, sizes, and content on their site to see if your work is fitting into a "market." This is so you understand that this market has long been established by the gatekeepers and you really don't have to reinvent any wheels....
Another, perhaps better way, is to do what coaching guru, Dan Sullivan suggests: to think of a price of your work and to keep going up until that price scares you. When it scares you, that's the right price --- and then add 20% to it in case you lowballed yourself! He believes that the value of your work shouldn't come from comparisons against what other people's work is offering but from a more subjective, emotional valuation: what would you be willing to pay for the value you created?
Proof that the value of art is completely subjective is the fact that works of art that are deemed so important to the human cultural experience tend to keep increasing in monetary worth. Case in point: Van Gogh could barely keep himself fed and alive in his time, and today his works are worth millions. And proof that the value of art isn't completely subjective is the continued efforts of galleries to control and monetize art markets for their own profit. Which do you choose? Perhaps that depends upon what you consider of value.