The influence of color on prices of abstract paintings

TL;DR

This study examines how visual features, especially color harmony and diversity, influence the pricing of abstract paintings using a large dataset and mixed-effects modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive set of visual features and applies them to analyze the impact of color on abstract painting prices, highlighting the significance of color harmony and diversity.

Findings

Color harmony has some explanatory power for prices.

Color complexity metrics are insignificant.

Color diversity explains price well.

Abstract

Determination of price of an artwork is a fundamental problem in cultural economics. In this work we investigate what impact visual characteristics of a painting have on its price. We construct a number of visual features measuring complexity of the painting, its points of interest, segmentation-based features, local color features, and features based on Itten and Kandinsky theories, and utilize mixed-effects model to study impact of these features on the painting price. We analyze the influence of the color on the example of the most complex art style - abstractionism, by created Kandinsky, for which the color is the primary basis. We use Itten's theory - the most recognized color theory in art history, from which the largest number of subtheories was born. For this day it is taken as the base for teaching artists. We utilize novel dataset of 3885 paintings collected from Christie's and Sotheby's and find that color harmony has some explanatory power, color complexity metrics are insignificant and color diversity explains price well.