Selling Art | Outside The Lines

Suppose you walk into a bookstore and are immediately beckoned by a brightly colored book cover that features an exquisite sunset over a stunningly surreal ocean. You pick up the book and turn it on its face. Unfortunately the description on the back doesn’t pique your interest nearly as much as the book’s enchanting cover. Nevertheless, you pull out your debit card and carry your newfound treasure to the cashier.

What just happened? Art sold art.

Art Sells Art

This happens all the time. Songs featured in movies become wildly popular; an art exhibition features the works of an unknown artist, which in turn makes him or her a household name overnight; expertly designed DVD covers allure consumers to buy; and theater posters sell theater tickets unassisted.

Erik Piepenburg of The New York Times declares, “Great theater posters…sell by design…the best posters convey the conceptual complexities of the plays they serve.”

Indeed, some of the most beautiful designs in the world can be found on the covers of theater posters.

Examples of Great Theater Poster Art

There are many remarkably crafted theater posters. Here are a couple posters that are impressive:

A Small Fire – Designed by Julia McNamara, A Small Fire’s show poster features two sets of hands, one red and the other white, on a solid black background. Speaking of the hands, McNamara says, “…I think of them as more feminine hands. They were always red, like fire. The color scheme really works. It makes it striking.”

Stage Kiss – Stage Kiss’s show poster, designed by Courtney Waddell Eckersley, displays hundreds of lipstick-laden kiss prints, all layered on top of one another. In reference to creating the graphic for the poster, Eckersley says, “I…picked up as many bright opaque and inexpensive lipstick shades as I could find.” Then, she and an intern “kissed the page a lot.” The piece appears abstract from a distance, but the lip prints are quite visible up close.

Art in all its forms often says more than words can ever express. Art is beauty. It entices, allures, and invites the beholder to come closer. There is no better way to sell art than by using another form of art to do so. This phenomenon takes place when an artful theater poster sells out a show.

Has a theater poster ever inspired you to purchase a theater ticket, simply because the poster was great? What are some of your favorite theater posters? When have you noticed art enticing you to purchase art?

Read more Segmation blog posts about art and color:

Selling Your Art in a Strained Economy

Art Transforms Traditional Business Practices

Selling your art at outdoor art fairs

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Addie Wagenknecht’s ‘Asymmetric Love Number 2’ is in good company with Jeff Koons and Chuck Close as Lindsay Howard and the Paddles ON! crew gets a ‘le shout-out’ in this month’s Vanity Fair France! Digital art is captivating, provocative and out of the ordinary, but is it profitable? Even though some people are eager to spend millions of dollars to acquire fine art pieces from auction houses,

it is hard to imagine spending this kind of money and walking away with only a GIF or JPEG file. Nevertheless, demand for digital art continues to grow and even though it has a long ways to go before it reaches the steep price tags seen in the contemporary art marketplace, Phillips auction house recently proved that people are willing to pay big bucks for digital works of art.

Phillips art auction house, in partnership with blogging platform Tumblr and online art auction house Paddle8, recently put on an event called, “Paddles ON! The world’s first major commercial auction of work by digital artists.” On the Tumblr site, Paddles ON! is described as an exhibition and auction that brings together artists who are using digital technologies to establish the next generation of contemporary art.

The auction was a success. It drew a large audience and brought in nearly one-hundred thousand dollars in sales. According to an article in Complex Art+Design, some of the high sellers included:

$16,000 – Aymmetric Love Number 2, an angular chandelier made of security cameras
$15,000 – Pixel, a wall sculpture
$11,000 – Americans!, a software-drive animation

Seeing the profitable nature of digital art was not only exciting for the sellers. For Phillips auction house and others involved with Paddles ON!, it marked a defining moment in the evolution of contemporary art. Auction curator Lindsay Howard says, “For 20 years it’s been universities and non-profit organizations that have been the primary support system for digital art.” With great enthusiasm and high earnings, it is believed that the for-profit auction may be another place where digital artists can go to display and sell their work.

It looks like a new day is dawning for digital artists, as well as Phillips auction house. Phillips, which was founded by Harry Phillips who once served as senior clerk to James Christie of Christie’s auction house, is well positioned to dominate the digital art market. Being smaller than Christie’s and Sotheby’s allows Phillips to take on the risk of selling digital art. From the success of this first auction, it seems hosting digital artwork could come with great reward.