It is the question everyone asks and almost nobody asks out loud. Artists hesitate for fear of seeming suspicious, buyers assume it is being kept from them. Here is the answer, with figures.
Who pays, first of all
This is the most misunderstood point. An agent’s commission is paid by the seller, never by the buyer.
In practice: the price shown on a work’s page is what the buyer pays, with transport and packing on top where they are due. Out of that amount the agent keeps the commission and pays the rest to the artist. No intermediary fee is added to the price.
That is what we do, and it is set out in black and white in our Terms and Conditions of Sale.
If an intermediary charges you, the buyer, a commission on top of the displayed price, that is not an artist’s agent: it is a marketplace, and the model is not the same.
Market rates
Here are the orders of magnitude practised in France and in Europe, all verifiable by reading the public terms of the parties concerned.
A traditional gallery most often keeps between forty and fifty per cent of the sale price. In return it exhibits, stores, insures, publishes, receives visitors, and carries the cost of a place.
An online platform sits between thirty and forty per cent depending on the operator and the volume. It brings an audience, rarely any support.
An artist’s agent generally sits between twenty-five and thirty-five per cent. There is no venue to finance, the number of artists is small, and each sale is negotiated.
An auction house charges on both sides: a seller’s commission, and buyer’s premium often between twenty and thirty per cent, which is added to the hammer price.
We negotiate our commission contractually with each artist, and it appears in the mandate we sign with them. We do not publish a single rate, because it depends on what we take on for each of them.
What the commission actually pays for
That is the real question. A percentage only means something set against the work it finances.
Documentation. Photographing a work properly, measuring it, dating it, writing its entry, adding it to the catalogue. For a body of three hundred pieces that is several months of work, and it is what allows a work to exist anywhere other than in a studio.
Visibility. A site, documented articles, search visibility built over years. An artist doing it alone spends the time not spent making.
Filtering enquiries. An agent filters. Out of ten messages, one or two lead somewhere. The artist only sees those.
The transaction. Secure payment, the invoice, the certificate where there is one, packing, a specialist carrier, insurance, tracking. Each of these is a trade in itself, and one mistake costs the work.
Liability. The least visible part and the one that matters most. If something breaks in transit, if there is a dispute or a withdrawal, the agent handles it. The artist keeps working.
What an artist should check before signing
Five points, and they fit on one page.
The rate and its basis: on the price excluding transport, or on the total collected. The difference is real.
The payment period after collection. Thirty days is a reasonable practice; beyond that there should be a reason.
Exclusivity: total, by territory, or by sales channel. An artist who also sells directly from the studio needs that in writing.
The term and the exit. A one year renewable mandate, terminable with clear notice, protects both parties. An open ended commitment protects neither.
What happens to works in progress at the end of the mandate, and to the photographs and texts produced during it.
We set out how it all works in how an agency represents an artist, and how to join us in getting represented by an agency.
And the buyer, in all this
The buyer pays the displayed price, with no intermediary surcharge. What that system buys is a chain that holds: a documented work, an invoice, an identified seller, insured transport and someone who answers after the sale.
It also explains why the price of a work is not the price of the material plus the hours. We break that down in how the price of a work is set.
One last piece of transparency
ARTDELION is a micro-entreprise, VAT is not applicable, and the contract of sale is concluded directly between seller and buyer. We collect on the seller’s behalf and pay over. This is all in our legal notice, and we would rather it were read before a question than after a doubt.