Original Art

There’s a problem with home decoration, which is this:  everyone has basically the same stuff.  The craze for interior design, which continues undiminished despite the credit crunch (perhaps because people are realising that they’re actually going to have to live in houses, instead of selling them) means everyone is decorating, using themes, colour schemes, statement-making furniture.  Thing is, everyone who themes their home in the same way (modern, for example, all chrome, black leather and Mark Rothko prints) ends up with virtually identical furnishings – even identical-looking art on the walls.  There’s a way around that, at least – getting some original art to finish rooms –: but isn’t original art horribly expensive?

Original art has traditionally been seen as the playground of the rich and infamous – not something your average man or woman about town can afford, when planning a bit of home improvement.  Which is why, over the years, there’s been a steady accumulation of reproduction prints and paintings, cropping up with exhausting regularity according to the “style” a person has chosen for redecorating. Rothko and Yves Klein in the modern; Van Gogh or Monet for the cheerily painted; and prints of Michelangelo sketches for the severely “classical”.  Original art tends to get thought of in these terms (as in, “could never afford a Michelangelo”) and so people go for reproductions instead – a habit that has had the unique effect of making something that is supposed to give a uniqueness to a space, homogenised and predictable.

There is, of course, an error propagating here:  generally, people doing up houses think of original art in the wrong terms.  Original art is just that – original, one-of-a-kind, unique.  It doesn’t have to be a genuine Monet. 

There’s plenty of original art available right now, at prices ranging from the tiny to the huge.  The versatility of the internet (the best effect of which has been to destabilise the idea that unless something is in an art gallery, it ain’t art) has given a whole new kind of art dealer a place to thrive.  These art dealers are selling original art of all styles, brokering sales directly between homeowner and artist.  The brilliant Art2Arts is a prime example:  persons browsing this site (which started in 2006 as a one-woman show and has grown into an internationally-recognised “warehouse” of original art) can choose from thousands of one-of-a-kind images priced from £1 to £4000.