Peter Lik Set World Record in 2014

“Phantom” Sells for an Astounding $6.5 Million

F**king crazy. AI could do this.

That is a nine year old story.
Thread title updated.
Be prepared for some "energetic" response.

Required reading on the subject of Peter Lik: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/...cipe-for-success-sell-prints-print-money.html

I do hope that's not behind a paywall. It's uh, eye opening for sure.

I guess I'm just not an avid follower of Mr Lik. But it's still f**king crazy. I wonder if he set it all up, bought it himself with a proxy just for the hell of it and to bolster his otherwise (I am at a loss for the proper adjective) work. The Thomas Kinkade of photography.

Pieter12 said:

I guess I'm just not an avid follower of Mr Lik. But it's still f**king crazy. I wonder if he set it all up, bought it himself with a proxy just for the hell of it and to bolster his otherwise (I am at a loss for the proper adjective) work. The Thomas Kinkade of photography.

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It doesn't seem above board, so to speak.

My wife bought one of my Minox contact prints for $100,000.
Private sale. I did have to loan the money to her for the sale.

ic-racer said:

My wife bought one of my Minox contact prints for $100,000.
Private sale. I did have to loan the money to her for the sale.

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You're lucky she didn't buy herself a Mercedes.

ic-racer said:

My wife bought one of my Minox contact prints for $100,000.
Private sale. I did have to loan the money to her for the sale.

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I hope that qualifies as a loss for tax purposes. For either of you, maybe even both, I'm not an accountant.

From what I remember, but willing to be wrong, there are states that will forgo sales tax if the piece of art bought is displayed in a public museum for a length of time. This allows the 'buyer' to say he bought a piece at an inflated figure without having to fork over the sales tax that would be owed otherwise. I believe Oregon does that.

Vaughn said:

From what I remember, but willing to be wrong, there are states that will forgo sales tax if the piece of art bought is displayed in a public museum for a length of time. This allows the 'buyer' to say he bought a piece at an inflated figure without having to fork over the sales tax that would be owed otherwise. I believe Oregon does that.

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Another weasel: I believe if you buy a piece of art and promise it to a public museum, you can write off the purchase price at that time from you federal taxes, even if you keep it for a while before it ends up with the museum. If the work appreciates, I guess you'd lose out on that. But as I said I am not an account and have no wish to even pretend I could ever be one.

Strangely enough, if the original artist donates art to a museum, they can only write off the expenses directly incurred with producing the art.

Is this the joke thread?

cliveh said:

Is this the joke thread?

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The joke is on anyone who buys his crap photos. And he's laughing all the way to the bank.

Interestlingly, the NYT article talks about him announcing the (private) sale and all the press his PR agency was able to get, but beyond his word--and some attorney for the presumed buyer--there's no evidence of a real sale. I suspect from just reading about him and his career that it was just a PR stunt.

Vaughn said:

From what I remember, but willing to be wrong, there are states that will forgo sales tax if the piece of art bought is displayed in a public museum for a length of time. This allows the 'buyer' to say he bought a piece at an inflated figure without having to fork over the sales tax that would be owed otherwise. I believe Oregon does that.

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Oregon doesn't have sales tax, so if you purchase something here, it doesn't matter whether it was hanging on the wall or not.

Vaughn said:

This allows the 'buyer' to say he bought a piece at an inflated figure

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You can say whatever you want. The bean-counters want receipts.

There's no proof he ever sold anything anywhere near that much. It's all based on his own website claim, with zero outside confirmation. The dude is a complete hack anyway. If you walked into his gallery in Lahaina (now incinerated), and offered $4,000 for the same ridiculous Photoshop colorized image, they'd probably accept it. It's all printed and framed on demand anyway, outside of Vegas, then shipped from there. Lahaina was just a showroom of samples - big backlit transparency samples, but with about as much artistic elegance as a backlit Hamm's Beer sign in a dive bar window.

I accidentally stumbled in there once, and told them they'd have to PAY ME $50,000 to hang it on my own wall; and even then, I'd reserve the right to drywall over it. He's the Tom Kincade of photography - same quasi-legal business model baiting people with "investment" notions, same locations, same kind of slick sales people. No museum would touch that kind of nonsense with a ten foot pole. His name accidentally came up at my dinner table quite awhile back when a director from the Whitney Museum happened to be visiting, and I dare not repeat her expletives. It was equivalent to a "zero minus" assessment.

ic-racer said:

My wife bought one of my Minox contact prints for $100,000.
Private sale. I did have to loan the money to her for the sale.

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pentaxuser

Any actual transaction of that amount, even a straw purchase scheme, would attract the IRS like a bear to honey. It would be financially counterproductive. And this alleged sale was in fashion of braggadio on the seller's own website, not something secretly undertaken. But no agency is going to waste their time trying to collect or penalize based on a tall tale where not a single cent was involved. It's just empty theater, just elliptical advertising bait to suckers.

It's a sales strategy to imply investment worth, without accidentally stepping over the line by a sales agent actually claiming that directly, at the risk of some FBI agent getting wind of it. And there are agents who specialize in art fraud, and fraudulent gallery claims. Lik might emulate Kincade, but I doubt he wants to make the same mistakes. He's had plenty of legal trouble of his own already. But one can look up the background of both for themselves. Here on the central Cal coast we have a number of our own shady overpriced "investment" galleries at prime tourist locations.

Not everything Lik and Kincaide did is questionable. If other photographers want to learn how to present, price, and market their work, they might learn a thing or two by checking into them. They both seem to be great businessmen.

Whether you like his work or not, Kincaide has millions of followers who buy his work from paintings to posters and mugs all imprinted with his heavenly light style.

Lik has shown that you don't need museums, dealers, and other middlemen that you have to bow down to and pray they throw you a few crumbs. He created his own galleries in major tourist markets and cities and sells direct. So many people here claim they're against knocking other people's art and photographic styles as we all have our likes and dislikes. Until multi-millionaire Lik's name is mentioned. Why is that?

Alan Edward Klein said:

Not everything Lik and Kincaide did is questionable. If other photographers want to learn how to present, price, and market their work, they might learn a thing or two by checking into them. They both seem to be great businessmen.

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Yeah. I don't get the negativism in this thread. Out of all despicable things that happen each and every day on this planet, this barely registered, if it's to be considered despicable to begin with.

Good for Mr Lik. Nice one. I hope he enjoys the cash.

Once thousands of people found out the work they highly "invested" in, even in terms of retirement hope, was in fact mass-produced and relatively worthless, and the whole business scheme collapsed, and that the individual in question (Kincade) resorted to franchise fraud, and not merely art fraud, and then got indicted with a serious felony, and drank himself to death facing both bankruptcy and prison time, would you call that a successful career? That kind of thing has a chilling effect on legitimate galleries too. How does the unsuspecting man on the street, being tempted with an art investment opportunity, tell the difference?

For those who enjoy his genre, and got in early, and bought actual paintings, done entirely by himself with real brushes and canvas, they might have something. I know someone like that. But all the later production line work by others, and mass-produced fancy posters, soon lost its claimed value due to the sheer quantity of it out there. There was nothing wrong in making them in that manner, but there was with respect to the degree of deception in how they were being sold.

When someone goes into a prime tourism location, and then schemes how to drive out the neighboring galleries in an underhanded manner, and takes over their own locations trying to create a waterfront monopoly, all for sake of a similar slippery "investment" sales approach (Lik), should I feel sorry for him if the whole thing burns down? I do feel sorry for all the actual residents of Lahaina, and their terrible sufferings at the moment. But predatory outsider-owned and operated tourist traps might not benefit them a single penny. And it's more of the same that they're especially dreading in the upcoming rebuilding phase, pricing them out of their own town.

And would you want to be a "great businessman" having to constantly look over your shoulder due to repeatedly tempting the FBI by waving a red cape at the bull? There are in fact laws in place defining the parameters of what is acceptable and what is not, when it comes to art marketing. You can't claim just anything in order to get someone else's money.

The first time I actually stumbled into a Lik gallery in Vegas, on a business trip, I almost literally vomited. I've never seen worse work in my life, or more blatantly cheesy digital coloration. That totally unverifiable sale of the print in question was actually a black and white shot of an exact spot in Antelope Canyon photographed tens of thousands of times. An assistant threw up some dust in the air for a little cloud ("angel") effect, and then the resulting digital image was over-colored solid red, no nuance whatsoever, and the actual quality of ink-jetting is downright amateurish. I'd defy any of you whining about by my comments to actually see one of those mass-produced samples in person and not call it the kind utter trash which discredits outdoor photographers in general. The actual image is vertical, rather blaah, but garish red all over. The web example has been doctored in another manner, as if a masterful black and white print with bold contrast, which it is not. The secret Arabic collector appears to be totally fictitious.

So Koraks, you obviously don't know what you are talking about in this instance. This is all old stuff being reposted, and to this day has never been verified. What cash? If there was cash, and the transaction has no evident paperwork, and the transaction really occurred, then the IRS would been barreling down on him for tax evasion years ago, and on felony scale, if anything really of that alleged sum of money transpired. But other than his own unverified web claim, there never has been a drop of proof he ever sold anything even remotely in that price range. "Good for him"? - for what, being an effective snake oil salesman? Being rich?

It is justifiable for him to sell some really huge prints in the forty thousand or so range, because that kind of item is inherently very expensive just to produce, properly and and frame, and install. And that is something his facility is highly competent to do. Why anyone would actually look at those big kindergartenish faux-colorized abominations in their own homes is another matter. The kind of thing one might encounter in Vegas or Miami, certainly not here, thank goodness.

Alan Edward Klein said:

Not everything Lik and Kincaide did is questionable. If other photographers want to learn how to present, price, and market their work, they might learn a thing or two by checking into them. They both seem to be great businessmen.

Whether you like his work or not, Kincaide has millions of followers who buy his work from paintings to posters and mugs all imprinted with his heavenly light style.

Lik has shown that you don't need museums, dealers, and other middlemen that you have to bow down to and pray they throw you a few crumbs. He created his own galleries in major tourist markets and cities and sells direct. So many people here claim they're against knocking other people's art and photographic styles as we all have our likes and dislikes. Until multi-millionaire Lik's name is mentioned. Why is that?

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From what I've been able to learn about you, Alan, I can tell that you have not read the NYT article linked above--right? I sincerely doubt you would have made this post if you had read it.

Yeah, and by now, Alan, you should know that I don't snipe on people just because they're rich successful persons. I have friends way more wealthy than Lik, and it makes no difference to me whether they're wealthy or not, or likewise, to them that I'm just a regular middle class grunt who happens to make good prints. We have other interests in common, other than income bracket, including photography itself.

What does annoy me is how artists per se try to make a living, and at times stick their neck out to control their own destiny by having their own gallery, but then get preempted over and over again by some highly funded franchise or big techie investor who gobbles up all the property and makes it unaffordable for anyone else to keep doing business there. It's kinda a scorched earth policy giving them a monopoly on prime location frontage. I can think of a number of photographers way better than Lik who were doing pretty good in their own gallery sales, and then had the rug pulled out from under them that way.

And even the last time I was in Lahaina, there was a gal running her own gallery who had previously been the art agent of an excellent photographer friend of mine, who had to close shop within that month because Lik had managed to undercut her own lease somehow, with some kind of shady deal, and intended to invade her space too. It's that kind of thing I don't respect, and never will.

There were some forum posts many years ago on some photography forum with a supposed Lik salesperson rep from Vegas (said so himself), he was a poster, engaging folk on the forum to come to Vegas and to see him (salesman) at the gallery. The posts were to do with the investment potential, the cascading prices as they became more limited, and the process - my recollection was he stated there were no digital processes used, no digitization, and all from a vintage film camera. It’s the stated reason why the work was so special. That many years ago, I recall following prices on EBay from various re-sellers of Lik prints, for “sold” prices, and they’d fall well under 1/2 of what the alleged stated retail price was. To my recollection.

The most expensively sold photo: if a collector acquired the most expensive and singular photo (here, so-said, Lik’s) my concrete belief is eventually the photograph would be presented for exhibit with a gallery or other establishment somewhere. I couldn’t imagine it sitting stored in perpetuity without pumping it for a future resale. Makes no sense. Has anyone seen this actual print? I’m sure it exists. Surely someone somewhere would promote it publicly for the benefit of building its resale. Outside the weird no-name PR article, surely it would be talked about somehow in some context - somewhere. Some articles on Artnet or Artforum or Art Newspaper or elsewhere about it Outside the context of a ghostly sale.

The attorney for Lik, at the time of sale, was well regarded but was pushing his art agency practice, he was young, and perhaps such a private sale from Lik to a buyer was an insider deal, might be one of the tricks of the trade. That attorney died at age 40 unfortunately - his father (the attorney’s) was a founding partner with CAA (incidentally a competitor to the attorney‘s new agency efforts) and wealthy art collector patron himself. I’m not asserting family involvement at all because any tricks may be manufactured through any means one can imagine, but maybe the Lik thing was a good way to boost the venture or this particular photographer.

It‘s plain weird to me there isn’t wasn’t more promotion of that “most expensive ever” photograph.

While not photo centric, this fellow Pérez does wonderful muckraking on some fishy timepieces and their breakthrough astronomical selling prices:

* Item (Omega Speedie), auction house, alleged insiders on both sides, supreme prices, ugly….

The quasi-breakthrough article based on what went public:


And here’s the original efforts by Pérez:

Rrrgcy said:

There were some forum posts many years ago on some photography forum with a supposed Lik salesperson rep from Vegas (said so himself), he was a poster, engaging folk on the forum to come to Vegas and to see him (salesman) at the gallery. The posts were to do with the investment potential, the cascading prices as they became more limited, and the process - my recollection was he stated there were no digital processes used, no digitization, and all from a vintage film camera. It’s the stated reason why the work was so special. That many years ago, I recall following prices on EBay from various sellers of his images, for “sold” prices, and they’d fall well under 1/2 of what the alleged stated retail price was. To my recollection.

The most expensively sold photo: if a collector acquired the most expensive and singular photo (here, so-said, Lik’s) my concrete belief is eventually the photograph would be presented for exhibit with a gallery or other establishment somewhere. I couldn’t imagine it sitting stored in perpetuity without pumping it for a future resale. Makes no sense. Has anyone seen this actual print? I’m sure it exists. Surely someone somewhere would promote it publicly for the benefit of building its resale. Outside the weird no-name PR article, surely it would be talked about somehow in some context - somewhere. Some articles on Artnet or Artforum or Art Newspaper or elsewhere about it Outside the context of a ghostly sale.

The attorney for Lik, at the time of sale, was well regarded but was pushing his art agency practice, he was young, and perhaps such a private sale from Lik to a buyer was an insider deal, might be one of the tricks of the trade. That attorney died at age 40 unfortunately - his father (the attorney’s) was a founding partner with CAA (incidentally a competitor to the attorney‘s new agency efforts) and wealthy art collector patron himself. I’m not asserting family involvement at all because any tricks may be manufactured through any means one can imagine, but maybe the Lik thing was a good way to boost the venture or this particular photographer.

It‘s plain weird to me there isn’t wasn’t more promotion of that “most expensive ever” photograph.

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Well, maybe the "buyer" (if one really exists) is embarrassed by the foolish purchase to come forth and draw any attention to the piece or themselves. According to the article (9 years old), Mr Lik's work has no value on the traditional resale market so any investment aspect is pretty much zilch. High-pressure, used-car sales tactics aimed at naive buyers with disposable income is Mr Lik's marketing plan. To whit, where are his galleries? In high-traffic tourist destinations, not art-centric areas where collectors might come through. The fact that he considered it quite a coup to score a location in Las Vegas' Caesar's Place--an epitome of bad taste--says a lot. I'm surprised he hasn't opened a branch at Circus Circus, but the patrons there might not have the bucks.

Those who have purchased Lik's photos apparently like them and enjoy them. Great. But they are decoration and not an investment.

Interestingly enough, a color version of the "Ghost" photo that is the focus of the article was selling for the same as his other works when it was still available on the Lik website.

Also, his website states he uses a digital camera, not film.

There was nothing unique of one-off about the alleged picture at all. It was inkjet printed in smaller sizes afterwards, if there ever even was a big one to begin with. And Lik's images are in general just about the most digitally altered and colorized as any I've ever seen, and quite amateurishly. Basically big kitchy postcards as if done with Krylon fluorescent spray paint. He does begin with 8x10 film shots, but why???? - makes no sense to me. He apparently wants big, but by the time any actual print comes out, it looks so utterly fake that I don't know why a camera needed to be involved at all.

Even the quality of the inkjet printing itself is substandard from what I'm accustomed to. The big sample backlit transparencies themselves are obviously done on chromogenic medium instead, but using the same digital files. And any claim that there is anything technically special about any of this is an outright lie. What being based near Vegas allows is access to remarkably skilled workman who can lay faux wallpapers on casino ceilings and so forth better than anyway, and therefore constitute a labor pool to lay down huge prints or transparencies seamlessly too. The technical side of that is indeed impressive, but certainly not what goes into the prints themselves. Those are downright mediocre.

And yes, this should all be classified as decor. People who can afford it can also afford to throw out their sofa and drapes at the same time, and start over with another loud splash of faux color on the wall. I'd imagine it's the kind of thing Tony Romo of "Scarface" would put on his big Miami mansion walls. The next owner would replace it with something less bullet-hole ridden.