The drop in visitors to his Rotterdam art gallery Poonberg was dramatic, said Paul van den Berg. Openings still drew a fair crowd during the first half of the year, but the weeks that followed them were eerily quiet. "I've often wondered: do I really need to sit here all day for nothing? At the end of every month I seriously considered quitting the business."

100-euro art

Eleven of the 178 members of the Dutch Galleries Association have done exactly that in 2009. Presumably they fell victim to the loss of turnover in the arts; the sector is estimated to have lost 30 percent turnover since the beginning of the recession.

In an effort to turn the tide gallery owner Cokkie Snoei offered a daring suggestion at a meeting of the Rotterdam Galleries Foundation last summer. What if all 20 galleries in Rotterdam offered a reproduction for 100 euros at the start of the season in September? Wouldn't that bring in the crowds?

The plan met with enthusiasm, but it quickly ran into practical problems. Most of the artists programmed were unable to produce a lithograph or other type of reproduction on such short notice. Only three galleries met the deadline.

Poonberg is one of them: it is now selling signed lithographs by the artist Robert Vulkers. It is not new work, Van den Berg stressed, the lithographs had been in storage for ten years. Poonberg combined the 100-euro art with a campaign of his own: calling it the 'Art Crisis Stock Exhibition', he offered a 20 percent discount on all works of art.

"It was a joke that caught on well," said Van den Berg. So much so that the gallery owner, after a miserable first six months, is once again "merrily bobbing along on the stormy waves of the economy".

Once off

Mirjam de Winter of the Phoebus gallery also improvised on Snoei's proposal: she asked not one but all the artists at her gallery to produce a 100-euro work of art. The response was huge. Last month she presented the work of 16 artists, including pen drawings by Bea Emsbach, lithographed wallpaper by Bernadette Beunk and perforated art postcards by Bernard Villers, under the title 'Once off'.

The show has been a success, De Winter said. She has sold 60 pieces, both to new customers and to the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. More importantly, visitors to the 'Once off' show also bought some of the artists' more expensive work. De Winter: "I am secretly considering repeating the 'Once off' show. I certainly don't want to become a 100-euro art store, but the show was fun, beautiful and good. It set something in motion."

Is extremely low-priced art an answer to the crisis? Simon Benson, a British artist living in Eindhoven who made two insect pictures in 100-print run: "You can't make a living as an artist by selling at these prices. But if it is to raise interest once a year, and open up the gallery to a new public, I don't mind in these times of crisis."

But Guus Broos, president of the Dutch Galleries Association, doesn't think 100-euro art is the answer to the crisis in the arts market. "Everybody knows what 100 euros is worth: not very much."

Spilt milk

The current recession, Broos said, is not about the price mechanism but about the lack of demand. "Art prices in the Netherlands are at a reasonable level. We have never had the kind of hype like in Germany, Britain or the US. There gallery owners are now? offering 40 to 50 percent discounts. There is no call for this in the Netherlands."

His advice to Dutch gallery owners is to give more attention to potential and existing customers, "and to the way you call attention to your art. Interest in art certainly hasn't gone away."

100-euro art reminds Broos of the recent milk strikes in Europe, in which milk farmers dumped million of litres of milk to protest against cut-throat prices. "That too was meant to show people a particular branch of industry is suffering. But just like spilling milk, offering art on the cheap is not a solution."