Artists should treat their art as art and take the process of making it as seriously as anyone takes their chosen profession. Great skill and insight are required in order to create truly original art. Transforming an idea or concept into a technically thought-provoking or emotion-arousing work of art in any medium is a talent that few people possess. And there you have the "purist's vision." Now if an artist wants to create art and never sell it, then he or she never has to worry about how to price it. That artist can afford to be a "purist," as you put it, produce art free of any encumbrances or concerns about what the art world or anyone else might think, and avoid "prostituting" or "debasing" that art by placing dollar values on it. But if you're an artist who wants to sell your art or who has to sell it in order to survive as an artist, you must use whatever tools are available to figure out how much it's worth and how best to sell it. Let's say you're just starting out as an artist, you have little or no experience showing or selling your work, and in a period of two minutes, you produce a pencil drawing on a piece of paper. You view this drawing as highly significant in your evolution as an artist and rank its creation as the single most important creative moment of your life. Consequently, you put a price of $20,000 on it because only for that amount of money will you agree to part with such an important work of art. This is a "purist's vision" approach to pricing as opposed to a "realities of the marketplace" approach. From a business standpoint, you'll have an extremely difficult time selling your drawing, as you won't be able to justify the $20,000 price to real art buyers in the real art world. You have no track record of selling art in that price range, and you have few or no shows, critical reviews, or supporting data from outside sources indicating that your art has that kind of value or collectability in the marketplace. The overwhelming majority of art buyers who have $20,000 to spend look for works of art by established artists with documented track records of showing and selling art in that price range. Your drawing is still highly significant to you, but what someone is willing to pay for it on the open market is a matter for art buyers to decide. You can price it however you wish, but you can never force anyone to buy it. Thai's the way the art business works. So if you want to sell it, you have to figure out what dollar amount someone is likely to pay for it on the open market and then price it at that amount. But the talc of your drawing does not end here. The art world may, one agree with you that the product of your two-minute moment precipitates a major transformational turning point in your career, and is well worth a $20,000 asking price, but you're going to have to prove first. Aspects of that drawing will have to be reflected in your art from the moment you created it onwards, the art world will have to recognize your art both critically and from the marketing standpoints, and you'll have to successfully produce, show, and sell for many years. Then one day, when your first retrospective exhibition opens at the Four-Star Museum of Art, that drawing will hang, framed and captioned as the first inspiration for all subsequent work. The art world will then understand and respect its significance, and a serious collector may well be willing to pay an extraordinary price to own this historically important document of your career. Returning for a moment to the concept of a purist artist who creates art and never sells it, sooner or later (hopefully later), that purist will pass on and leave behind a body of work Unless that artist leaves specific instructions in his or her will for that body of work to be destroyed, it will become subject to those market forces that the artist strived for a life-time to avoid. At the very least, it’ll have to be appraised for tax, donation, or inheritance purposes in most cases, it eventually comes onto the market either through a probable sale, an auction, or as represented by a dealer, gallery, or family member. The moral of the story is that one way or another, someone somewhere at some point in time will use tried and true methods to realistically price and either sell, donate, trade or otherwise transact any work of art that come—onto the market in any way, shape, or form. I hope that that person will be you, the artist, and that you’ll price your art according to what the market will bear, sell plenty of it, and have a long and rewarding career. Answer the following questions indicating your option for each question: