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Traditionally, the only way to combat these nebulous conditions and create price transparency has been to sell art in auctions. These represented 22.5% of worldwide art sales in 1997-98, according to the European Commission in Brussels. And the world's two main players, Christie's and Britain's Sotheby's, as well as France's Tajan and Britain's Philips, which are both owned by French luxury-goods group LVMH, now dominate the market. As Gaillard emphasizes in his report, these auction houses have created a high level of professionalism in the art market thanks to the systematic publication of catalogs and a strong focus on marketing, advertising, and public relations: "Auction houses have managed to make prices in public auctions competitive prices in a transparent art market." But if the art world really wants to gain large exposure and become widely accessible, the only solution is the Internet. Today, only 2% of international art sales, valued by the EC at $7 billion, are actually well known -- and that's because those took place in public auctions. With the help of the Internet, that figure is sure to rise, since information can now circulate on a larger scale, allowing the value of art to be redefined and modernized. Thanks to its Web site, Sotheby's is already capturing clients who have never set foot in an auction house but are interested in buying art. The German-American site Artnet.com is already reaping benefits, and others, like France's Enviedart.com and Artprice.com, are actually creating new concepts to further open the art market. SELLING TO MICHIGAN. For now, it looks like online auctions are well on their way to becoming a success. Net auctioneers like eBay.com are expanding in Europe, and Artnet.com has already made $223,000 in the first half of this year. Sotheby's, which reported first-half sales of $221 million, made $31 million over the same period in online sales alone. As in its brick-and-mortar auction rooms, the company sells only upscale works of art. Currently, an armless Venus statue by Aristide Maillol, with a bidding price starting at $500,000, is up for auction on Sotheby's site. Other sites are looking to create a niche for themselves. French startup Enviedart.com, for example, sells contemporary art that has never before circulated on the market at a fixed rate. With 110 artists represented on the site, Nicolas Portalier, the company's co-founder, hopes to make the art market more democratic. "A lot of people don't dare to enter art galleries, either because they are too intimidated or because they are suspicious of a pricing system that is too opaque." Enviedart.com aims to offer prices below the market standard, charging commissions of only 30% on sales -- as opposed to the 50%-to-60% cut that galleries generally take. The site, which launched last summer, expects yearend sales to reach $132,000. Galleries, of course, see these newcomers as threats. Anne Lahumière, president of the French Committee of Art Galleries, is critical of the attempt to bring the art market onto the Web. "The physical contact with a work of art is indispensable. Even with catalogs, I've already had bad surprises, such as holes in paintings that weren't visible in the photo. The Internet will only attract those looking for a $200 piece of junk they can hang on their wall somewhere back in Michigan. The other online buyers will be those that have already seen the works that interest them in galleries." ABUNDANT INFO. That isn't stopping companies like Artprice.com from shaking up the art market -- and making information about it accessible, abundant, and reliable. Not only does the Lyon-based dot-com offer its subscribers rankings of artists but it also stocks information on all existing auction catalogs, giving data on objects sold and unsold. Thanks to research carried out by roughly 20 graduates from Paris' Ecole du Louvre art school, the site covers 300 years of auction sales -- with 2.5 million sale prices and 179,000 artist biographies, from the 4th century all the way up to the 21st. A catalog with a list of 300,000 analyses and pictures of artworks is also available on the Artprice.com Web site for $25 to $50. Some critics complain that Artprice.com has reduced the value of art to mere numbers. "Critics are emotional. They refuse to bring art down to the level of a calculation, which they see as an ideological intrusion into the liberal system of one of the oldest markets in the world," says Artprice.com's economist, Pascal Diethelm. But the site isn't just giving numbers -- it's contributing to the transparency of the market. It's because of the Internet that so much information can be made accessible, that so many players can join in, and that greater transparency is finally being attained. And it's thanks to companies like Arptrice.com that online auctions will be able to take off. The art market may be on its way to becoming an economic ideal after all. By Cécile Ducourtieux Translated by Inka Resch |
