The Eliza Doolittle of art dealing is attempting to become My Fair Lady. Nearly four years after auctions on the Internet began including fine art, the nature and tone of the effort have risen.
Two months ago Artnet.com held the first high-end on-line art auction to originate from North America. On May 28 eBay, which since 1995 has specialized in person-to-person on-line trading, bought Butterfield & Butterfield auctioneers to produce upscale Internet sales beginning this fall. About two months hence Sotheby’s Holdings, Inc., in partnership with Amazon.com, Inc., will mount their first on-line sale. And Christie’s auction house has formed an internal committee to decide what steps it should take to enter a field that presumably represents, as General Motors used to say, the World of Tomorrow.
Will that world encourage knowledgeable art collecting as opposed to uninformed buying? Everyone says it’s too early to tell. We’re now in the stage when participants speak in high-flown generalities.
“Most art dealing will eventually move to the Internet,” says Hans Neuendorf, CEO of Artnet.com, “because the cost of bringing together the buyer and seller (of an artwork) has always been very expensive. It is now, on average, 25 percent of every transaction. But the Internet can bring it down. We’ve brought it down to 5 percent. Most of the cost occurs in establishing contact between buyer and seller, and color images on the Internet are the key to everything.”
There presently are two kinds of on-line auction, each with its own distinct character. The first, pioneered by eBay, allows anyone with access to the Internet to put collectibles up for sale for a period of 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. Those interested post bids electronically and wait for a flurry of activity before closing time. At this writing, a staggering 2,393,896 objects in various categories were offered. They ranged from pin-ups of Alyssa Milano to a painting by American precisionist Charles Sheeler. Most of the pieces had a value under $1,000, which thus far has earned for eBay the reputation of an on-line garage sale or flea market.
Artnet.com is, as Neuendorf says, “a dealer service, not an auction house” because consignments come through art dealers rather than private individuals. This is not a place for thrift-shop merchandise. Dealers vet the objects and file condition reports, which are intended to establish a certain level of trust with the prospective buyer. On high-end objects — Artnet.com estimated a Joseph Cornell construction between $100,000 and $120,000 and a watercolor by Lucio Fontana between $220,000 and $250,000 — freewheeling activity in which just anyone can put up a piece and assure a responsible transaction does not play well.
“A lot of the marketing of Christie’s and Sotheby’s (auction houses) addresses issues of authenticity and long-term responsibility,” says Morgan Spangle, formerly one of Christie’s specialists in contemporary art. “They’ve been brilliant at that, and people have been willing to trust them not only to buy but also to sell better material. The stuff offered for sale on-line has been, by comparison, pretty anemic; but, to be charitable, it’s a beginning.”
Spangle is building a high-end network of dealers called The Art Group.Com, and his dealers will offer on the Internet artworks from their inventories. This is a practice similar to that of Artnet.com, but Spangle says the consistency of his network’s level of expertise (plus an on-line library) will give added value.
Neuendorf already offers an on-line “bookstore” that discounts titles, a changing collection of essays and reviews, and access to previous sale records for works by the artists. Artnet.com’s effort clearly has been to make available the kinds of research material a client can come in contact with at a traditional auction house.
The big difference between auction houses and on-line auctions has to do with the pieces’ availability for viewing. Works of art are not just images. They’re objects with countless nuances that can be perceived only through first-hand encounters. Such nuances determine desirability and, hence, value.
Traditional auction houses and, of course, galleries make the encounters possible during which prospective buyers (or anyone acting on their behalf) can assess the impact of the art object for themselves. This cannot be achieved with accuracy through reproductions, electronic or otherwise.
Meaningful art collecting — which proves different from pathological amassing — is based on familiarity with actual objects and a growing connoisseurship. Learning first hand, from the objects, is one of the most stimulating parts of collecting. Discernment may be fostered by reproductions — that’s the purpose of slides in art history classes — but it ultimately comes, if at all, through the viewing of a great many originals, which on-line auctions do not now allow.
Obviously, a certain amount of passion fuels collecting, and it is at its peak prior to acquisition. So one might assume collectors would take advantage of viewing possibilities after having been introduced to the pieces by detailed condition reports. But, interestingly, that has not always been the case.
“Having worked in galleries, I saw that while some sales were made from transparencies or catalogs,” Spangle says, “probably 90 percent of the buyers still came in to see the pieces. Auction houses also give opportunities for viewing, but I estimated that between 40 and 50 percent of our sales (at Christie’s) were made entirely through catalogs, and I learned about 80 percent of our condition reports sat in a file and never were requested.”
That suggests possession is more important to many collectors than scrutiny. If so, on-line auctions may prove a dream for postponing the encounter with art until after a purchase is made. But Neuendorf says one’s eye need not be starved beforehand. Although it’s now unusual, prospective buyers can negotiate with dealers to set up viewings or, perhaps, through-the-mail sales contingent on approval.
Where does this leave living artists, who usually are adamant about their work being seen? A lot of contemporary art is offered for sale on the Internet. Would an artist buy from those sources?
“They make me a little nervous,” says Bob Thall, who last year received a Solomon R. Guggenheim grant for the continuance of a long-running photographic project on Chicago. “I appreciate a dealer more for legitimacy and exhibitions than for making money. Anybody can create a website, but my work doesn’t look too good at 72 dots per inch.
“On the other hand, eBay is good for the kind of thing you’d wait years to stumble across. I got involved with it to sell gifts I had bought for old girlfriends and found a number of asymmetric watches from the ’60s that I collect. A lot of people — more than 3 million around the world — are cleaning out one part of their closets while filling another part. You become dealer and consumer at the same time. It forms a habit. I drop in every night after checking my e-mail.”
Beyond the immediate acquisition, Thall says there’s another advantage to eBay’s on-line auctions: the easy rectification of “mistakes.” Once a reserve bid determined by the seller has been met, the successful bidder is obliged to pay the amount and accept the object; those who default (just like dishonest sellers) have returns filed against them, which are posted electronically. If, however, qualms about the purchase occur, the buyer can re-submit the object for consideration by bidders who lost it the first time. Given the addiction factor, they almost certainly will be back. (Whether the same will happen with Great Collections, eBay’s forthcoming high-end project, remains to be seen.)
“No one can predict the ultimate effect of the Internet (on art dealing),” says Natalie van Straaten, executive director of the Chicago Art Dealers Association. “It’s hard to imagine that most dealing would be conducted electronically any more than other commerce would. The Internet is a revolutionary tool that creates new marketplaces and exciting possibilities. But people still will want to experience art first-hand. The Internet cannot replace direct experience.”
The next logical step in on-line auctions already has been taken, though not by pioneers in the United States. Last spring an English firm, Bonham’s, held the first real-time auction (of soccer memorabilia) in which on-line bidders were visually transported to the sale room by means of cable television. Little would seem to have been gained by this apart from spectacle. But there we are: If comparatively few care about seeing unmediated and in person the art they buy, they may at least be interested in having another electronic instrument show them how they buy it.
“We are at the old proverbial fork in the road,” says Kevin Pursglove, senior director of communications for eBay. “Can we use the Internet not only for trading and buying but also for (serious) collecting? That we don’t know. We’re entering Brave New World. But it is possible that by exposing greater numbers of people to the concept of collecting the Internet can serve as an educational tool. Maybe it can reinvigorate people to the sense of collecting, particularly the young who have turned off to some other ways of learning and remain responsive to electronic media.”
