Technology drives the art trade
David Zwirner livestream event; former Sotheby’s executives launch platforms; Christie’s hosts London art fair online
David Zwirner is taking his gallery business to the next digital level with a one-day, publicly livestreamed event from four locations on June 10. “It will be like Art TV. We are planning talks and interactive walk-throughs based around 40 artworks, most of which will be brand new,” Zwirner says.
These will be sent to his galleries in New York, London, Hong Kong and Paris and include a new painting by the sought-after Kerry James Marshall, priced at $2.5m. Other artists include Carol Bove, Wolfgang Tillmans and photographer Christopher Williams, who helped design the platform. The initiative is called “Program” and could run once or twice a year, Zwirner says.
The event deliberately coincides with when Art Basel would have had its Swiss edition, now postponed until September. “Artists are still making works and our galleries will be open. We want to share them at a time when people are used to engaging with art,” Zwirner says. Exact details are not yet set but there are about five hours of scheduled broadcasts in the planning, plus pre-recorded content. Just as for an art fair, there will be a VIP preview online “for people we know”, Zwirner says.
He is as enthusiastic about the public day. “We’ve had 30,000 people visit our website at a weekend, and hits from more than 140 countries. Probably only about 1 per cent of them are [buying] clients but a casual online visitor can now get so much more than a casual visitor to a gallery,” he says. davidzwirner.com/viewing-room
Three senior former Sotheby’s staffers are among the management of a new company that turns private sales digital. Private sales are those conducted away from the glare of an auction saleroom and have proved a popular, discreet channel since the pandemic struck. Adam Chinn, who was Sotheby’s chief operating officer; John Auerbach, previously in charge of its digital business; and George O’Dell, a contemporary art specialist who ran Sotheby’s private sales in London, are behind LiveArt, a platform that enables collectors to connect directly, and to artists, with levels of anonymity as required. Chief executive is Boris Pevzner, who founded the digital inventory tool Collectrium, bought by Christie’s in 2015.
LiveArt uses machine learning to help value works and its marketplace will sit on an existing database of public auction results, available for free (liveart.ai). Their sweet spot, O’Dell says, will be for art valued between $50,000 and $500,000. LiveArt will charge a 10 per cent commission on any sales made; at public auction, the equivalent fee would be between 20 and 25 per cent. It is early days in a competitive environment, and other attempts to automate valuations and transactions of fine art have yet to fly. Times are changing, though. “People have been trying to buy and sell to each other over social media. What has been missing is the security of a back end,” O’Dell says.
Another Sotheby’s alum, its previous chair Robin Woodhead, has joined with Beth Greenacre, former curator to David Bowie, to make charity sales work better for artists. They have launched an online auction site called The Stand, which, rather than add to the frequent requests that artists get to donate their works, will give the bulk of proceeds back to them (70 per cent) and a minimum 20 per cent to selected charity partners. The remaining 10 per cent will go back into the platform.
“It puts the artist at the centre of the sale while also giving to charity in a more consistent and sustainable way,” Woodhead says. Artists will mostly be those in the “marginalised middle” who need the exposure, he adds.
Greenacre, who is curator of the AllBright membership club for women, will organise The Stand’s first sale, called “The Female Gaze”, of about 20 works. Artists include Zoë Buckman, Lady Skollie and a digital art collective called Goldentailx, with estimates currently up to £12,000 per work (May 19-21, thestand.art). Benefiting charities include Women for Women International. The initial plan is to host about six sales a year, via the Invaluable auction platform. Real-life showings are not on the cards. “The more lean we are, the more we can give back,” Greenacre says.
The increasingly in-demand Veronica Ryan has found European gallery representation through Alison Jacques. This month, Ryan has a landmark exhibition opening at Spike Island, Bristol, and new works commissioned for The Hepworth Wakefield. A show at Jacques’s London gallery follows next year. The artist, who sculpts elements of nature such as fruit and vegetables, is already represented by Paula Cooper Gallery in New York.
“Veronica will be co-represented by two strong women, both making sure that the world properly hears her voice,” Jacques says. Ryan moved to the UK from Montserrat as a child and is one of two artists selected to make the UK’s first public sculptures honouring the “Windrush generation” — so called in 2017, when a scandal erupted over the UK government’s threats to deport hundreds of people who had arrived from the Caribbean on the Empire Windrush and other ships between 1948 and 1971.
Christie’s website will support the first real-life edition of Eye of the Collector, a fair for antique to contemporary art and design. Its London launch was originally set for May 2020 but thwarted by the pandemic, though the fair ran online. Eye of the Collector is now due back at the elegant Two Temple Place between September 8 and 11.
Christie’s has already offered its platform to other gallery events — including the 1-54 fair for African art — and such partnerships are a sign of how traditional barriers in the trade are breaking down. “It has become apparent during this period that teamwork and collaboration are incredibly important. We are much stronger as a group,” says Nazy Vassegh, founder of Eye of the Collector. The reach of an international auction house could be vital to a fledgling fair — Christie’s website recorded 26.5m visitors in 2020.