The Challenges of Buying Art in One's Pajamas

This issue makes me feel all schizophrenic.

But let me begin with a personal epiphany I frequently refer back to when considering how visual information can lead you to very different conclusions based on whether you view it bit by bit or as a whole. It was during the trial of the LAPD officers who had severely beaten Rodney King, and I watched on TV as the defense slowed down the video of the incident and had experts calmly explain, second by second, how each and every action taken by the police was in full compliance with standard, legal procedures. Deconstructed in slow motion that way, with each action forming one succinct piece of information (one, info-bit, if you will), the defense's case was very compelling, and I found myself wondering if indeed the officers hadn't just followed procedure. Then the newscast airing the trial replayed the tape at normal speed and I was jolted out of my info-bit-induced lull, and it was suddenly very clear to me. There was no question. Those cops had beaten the sh*t out of that poor man.

I thought about this again reading A Guide to the Virtual Art Market, the nice update in ARTNews by Eileen Kinsella (one of my favorite arts market writers) on how technology is influencing the way art is being bought and sold:

But interpreting so much raw data and understanding the variables isn't easy. "What gets a little bit lost is that not every square inch of a Picasso painting is the equivalent of every other. It's not like ounces of gold," says Norman.

Ron Warren, director of the Mary Boone Gallery, concurs. "The database is a great tool and has had a huge impact on the availability of information, but collectors have to use it with caution," Warren says. "The information can support almost any argument: how well an artist has performed, how poorly an artist has performed." But, he adds, "a database can't tell you what it's like to experience a work."

Indeed, no amount of information (descriptive or simply meta) can tell you what it's going to feel like to stand next to a work of art for the first time. I've often made a beeline to a fabled work in a museum to find that standing in front of it was not at all the experience I had expected. Either the colors or gestures seemed so very different from what I imagined, based on the images I had seen, or it was of such a different scale (how was I to realize, growing up in Ohio, that The Persistence of Memory, which loomed so large in my imagination as a kid, was such a small canvas?).

Part of this problem is being addressed by what stands to be a defining online art-viewing/buying experience: the VIP Art Fair. As I've discussed here before and as Eileen's report delves into more deeply:

The effectiveness of online auctions for multimillion-dollar masterpieces will be put to the test when some of the world's top galleries—including James Cohan, Gagosian, David Zwirner, and White Cube—launch the VIP Art Fair, billed as the first event of its kind, in January. All of the participating galleries, which fall under three classifications—founding galleries, emerging galleries, and exhibitors showing the work of a single artist—will have their own virtual booths. The online versions will attempt to simulate the actual physical placement of works in a booth. Paintings will "hang on the wall," sculptures will "sit on the floor," and works will be presented in relation to human scale. [emphasis mine]

Visitors will be able to zoom in to a painting's surface, get multiple views of a three-dimensional sculpture, or watch videos of multimedia pieces. Telephone or online chats with dealers, via Skype or iChat, will be available to collectors who pay for access. A VIP ticket, giving access to interactive capabilities, will cost $100 on the first two days of the fair and $20 thereafter. Browsing online will be free.

James Cohan conceived of and planned the fair with his wife, Jane, and Internet entrepreneurs Jonas and Alessandra Almgren. "We started conceptualizing about what the benefits of an art fair are and how they can translate into the virtual world," Cohan says, adding that he hopes to attract both new and established collectors to the fair.

Full disclosure: Winkleman Gallery is participating in the VIP Art Fair and we're very excited that the VIP team is specifically interested in solving some of the more challenging online presentation issues (we have a few very special challenges planned for our booth and, well, I'm such a geek, I can't wait to see how they turn out).

Still, how do I resolved this seeming paradox? On one hand I know that the essential art experience is to stand before the work yourself. On the other hand, as the technology permits a closer and closer approximation of that experience (without suggesting it will ever be the same), I find myself wanting to be there for that too. If only as a comparison point, perhaps, but also because I feel it's an advance over the current next-best thing to being there (i.e., flat re-sized images in books or low res online images without a point of reference).

There's no doubt that collectors are much more comforting buying work from jpgs than ever before, but as LA-based collector Dean Valentine notes, most collectors are still hesitant if they've never seen the artist's work at all:

When Dean Valentine, a Los ­Angeles-based media entrepreneur and a leading collector of contemporary art, wants to know what the top art galleries are showing and selling at major art fairs, he relies largely on virtual "visits" to their booths. Valentine generally avoids visiting in person because, he says, the frenzied atmosphere "brings out the worst" in competitive buyers, and "decontextualizes" the art in question, leaving viewers with no real sense of how an individual piece fits into the artist's oeuvre. "Years ago, it would not have been possible to look at a gallery's whole booth and offerings online. That has been a godsend and really made a difference," says Valentine.

Still, his decisions about what to buy are never based on digital images alone. "I buy things off JPEGs if I know the work already and I've seen it live," he says. When you're looking at a painting on screen, "it doesn't convey size or texture. It's really deceptively ineffective for making actual decisions about art."

Hence my schizophrenia.

Utimately, if nothing else (and I'll be the first to acknowledge that I am not exactly sure what to expect), efforts like the VIP Art Fair represent an opportunity to reach new audiences who will, hopefully, one day stop by the gallery or we'll meet doing a fair they visit too. I know plenty of collectors too busy or otherwise not interested in visiting the real world fairs because they don't enjoy the physical experience (personally, I like taking our show on the road, but you can't be all things to all people all the time ;-), so I am curious how being able to "experience" one in their pajamas might appeal to them.

Stay Tuned!