How much?!?!

How to price a painting? That's the million dollar question! Pricing has always been a nightmare. What's the right price? How the hell would I know. But lets not get too depressed. Apparently, it has been scientifically proven that we like expensive things more.

In an experiment conducted by Antonio Rangel at the California Institute of Technology, the brains of 20 volunteers were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging while they tasted five different wines costing $5 to $90 a bottle. But Rangel fibbed, telling them that the cheap wine was the most expensive, or giving the same price to two different wines. The scanner showed consistently that the flow of blood to the part of the brain that registers pleasure, the medial orbitofrontal cortex, increased when the price was declared to be high, not according to the quality of the wine. In case this got attributed simply to the ignorant palates of the volunteers, Rangel repeated the experiment with members of the Stanford University wine club and got widely similar results.

I have similar experiences when it comes to the female members of my family (especially my sister and to a lesser degree my wife) but unfortunately not my clients. So, next time i will try to price something i will keep this in mind. The more expensive it is, the more it will be liked and appreciated.

100

This is my 100th post. Being such an important number i wanted to make some sort of important announcement and here it is.....in a few days a few of my friend and myself are going to open a new blog/website called il-manocca. The idea is to have a general blog where a number of individuals can post on various topics from a progressive perspective. Apart from general commentary my involvement will also include two other main contributions.

Firstly, articles that up till now were being published on The Politics of Art will now be posted on il-manocca. The Politics of Art did not have the following and participation i had hoped for. Now i hope that il-manocca, being targeted to a larger audience, will be a more appropriate forum where to discuss the political issues concerning the artistic community. There are other plans for the future, hopefully il-manocca can help us realise them.

Secondly, I shall be posting a regular cartoon strip entitled Zagza's Wit. Zagza, (his real name is Zagzagel), was once the angel of wisdom. Rumours have it that he was planning a revolution to change the kingdom into a democratic republic and the authorities did not like it. Some say he left, others say he was thrown out; what is certain is that he is now living amongst us. He has become a truly Maltese and like all Maltese he has something to say about everything.

Bertu - My Alter Ego

Let me introduce you to Bertu! Bertu is my alter ego. Bertu is also a political cartonist. He shares a body with me and is what you might call a political animal. He lives, strives and feeds on politicians' and public figures' misfortunes. Although Bertu and I have the same political inclinations and even opinions, Bertu has the nerve and guts that most of the time I lack. Lately, we found ourselves at loggerheads with each other. During the last general election, Bertu somewhat took over and started publishing some cartoons (he actually calls them Bertoons). So far so good. The problem is that he now wants to take over this blog too; and that is out of the question. So we have come to an agreement, Bertu should also have his own blog. His Bertoons will from now on be found at http://bertoons.blogspot.com

Post Election

This last month i have not blogged at all. I was busy over at Jacques' discussing the election and its outcome. I cannot say that i am happy with the result but that's life. Now that a little bit of normality is taking over and election fever is beginning to subside the intention is to write here more. A number of things happened this last month that i wanted to blog about but did not, one of them was the art exhibition by AD's Core Green. I had a couple of paintings there, here I am reproducing one of them, Kaxxi Kaxxi, Kullimkien Kaxxi. Quite happy of this piece.

Kenneth Zammit Tabona at b'art

Yesterday I managed to pop by to the opening of Kenneth Zammit Tabona's latest exhibition of watercolours. The exhibition, which is being held at ‘b’art’- Art Gallery and Wine bar is a collection of works painted 'al fresco', and fresh it is indeed. The childlike simplicity found in Kenneth's paintings has always intrigued me. The awkward relationship between perspective and colour in Kenneth’s work results in a delightful and refreshing vision; he manages to combine simplicity and complexity (such as in Trees at San Anton Gardens (left)) on the same piece of paper in a way no other Maltese artist can. My Favourite piece is definitely ‘The Road to Nowhere’ (right), just fell in love with the piece.

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