  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.
