Art Schooled

Being sleep deprived at 3 am with a high-speed internet connection and a Paypal account can get you into trouble. My friends will never let me live down that authentic alien corpse I paid $800 for. Sometimes though, impaired judgement and twoclick payment can be a good thing.

I was reading a news site and a member informed everyone that a highly sought after art print was just released. It was a nifty work by a famous artist (It was a portrait of some guy named Barack Obama in case you were curious). The kicker is it went on sale while the entire continent of people who would want it were asleep. If you have any experience purchasing sought after art prints, you’ll know scoring one typically involves 24 hours of sitting in front of your computer hitting the refresh button every five minutes. When they eventually go on sale they’re sold out in under five seconds—no joke, this actually happens.

I’m saying all this in hindsight though. My thought process at the time was “Looks cool. Wouldn’t hang it on the wall but it’s only $45. Sure, why not?” Then I pulled the trigger and promptly passed out. The next morning when I checked out the news site there were a bunch of babies crying foul that they missed the sale of this print.

A quick hop over to ebay, where all the world’s greatest artists go to sell their wares, and you could see the demand for this print was crazy. The first one went for $400. The next one went for $600. Then over the next few days $800, $1000, $1800, $2800. My heart was palpitating. I still hadn’t received the print in the mail but I’ve listened to “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers at least twice and knew it was time cash in my chips, so I listed the print on ebay.

I’ve now entered the morally dubious world of the art flipper (a euphemism the art world uses to refer to flippers is the secondary market). People who flip art are loved by people who own the work and loathed by people who don’t. Loved by the haves since they drive up the prices. Loathed by the have-nots since they’re getting charged outrageous amounts of cash for something they want. What do the artists think of art flippers? It is my understanding that artists love it when you buy their work for cheap then turn around and sell it at an inflated price. Who wouldn’t?

It turns out I was mistaken. The glee of watchingthe bidding escalate on my ebay auction was cut short when I received an email from the assistant of the artist who made the prints. He informed me that I had been busted flipping his work, they were canceling my order and the print would be given to someone who plans to hang it on their wall. After I finished reading the email, as if on cue, I received another email from Paypal informing me I had just been refunded my $45.

I responded to the assistant with about a million questions. Do I not have the right to sell something I own? How much time needs to pass before you’re allowed to sell a piece of art you own? Isn’t this all a little Orwellian? But I got no response. I’ll just blame the whole sad affair on a finicky and pretentious artist. So there’s nothing I can do except constantly refresh the artist’s page and wait for the next big print to drop. However, next time, I’ll wait till I have the piece in hand before I make the big sale.