I can’t speak for others, but most of the art work I have been moved to purchase for myself has been paintings. I can admire beautiful pen-and-ink work, but for display I want color.
I also want strong imagery, whether down-to-earth realistic or not (do you consider Impressionist work realistic in that it is representational, or not, in that it is by no means photographic)?
And I want an idea of some sort, something that is being presented as a concept or visual sensation and not just something illustrative. Give me Andrew Wyeth over N.C. Wyeth.
I’m not a big collector and don’t have a collector’s budget, but I do have several framed art prints and a number of originals:
• a very realistic still life in oils
• a small Paris scene in oils
• a watercolor landscape
• several art photographs, one a beautiful piece of work done by my son, who is a fine amateur photographer
• an Asian-style ink brush painting of Bodhidharma
I wouldn’t buy art work as a gift and I wouldn’t want it given to me. Taste is too individual for that.
As to the price, what I can afford would be an absolute limit, regardless of what I thought it was worth. I would measure the price against the pleasure I would feel in seeing it all the time. I don’t consider myself a patron or investor when it comes to art, just a fairly discerning and appreciative audience.
It still kills me that I had the opportunity to buy this painting for $900 in a gallery in Montreal in 1970 and I didn’t do it because I would have had to borrow the money. I stood in front of it for a long while and felt it and loved it and ached with wanting it, and then I gathered myself together and walked away. The next time I saw the image, poster prints of it were in the Harvard Coop and going for about $12. Now a print would cost me $40.