On Buying Art Online:

Below are a series of articles on the buying of art.

1. "You've Seen The Email, Now Buy The Art."

2. "Great artist, Or Just A Great Painter."

(Paraphrased from an article "You’ve Seen the Email, Now Buy the Art," by Jori Finkel. Published: February 4, 2007, New York Times. This article really sets out the current situation - Peter Worsley.)

The internet makes it easy for you to view an artwork online. If the website or email communication is well designed, you may quickly obtain a good idea from the digital image, if the painting is something you should consider seriously.

Today, much art, particularly contemporary art, is being sold online, where the buyer has not actually seen the work.

Some exhibitions have opened with most of the hanging art already sold from an online version of the gallery.

The gallery owner sold the paintings before the show opened, in large part through a flurry of email messages and digital images.

The owner was quick to add that most of these buyers already knew the artist's work. Many already owned a painting by the artist.

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Buyers and Sellers: - This is not the case of an Internet surfer discovering a picture on an e-commerce site and tossing it into a shopping cart, but more a sign of how efficient the high-end contemporary art market has become.

The advantages for galleries and artists are abundant: digital images are easier to produce than the catalog and magazine reproductions that have long helped to get the word — or image — out.

And they are cheaper than transparencies, which now tend to serve more archival purposes.

But what do collectors have to gain from buying this way, without the pleasure of interacting with the work itself or the security of hands-on inspection?

Do not buyers want to see the art in person?

It seems that buyers are going for the name of an artist, not a particular work.

Of course, some collectors go to great lengths to see a new work, sometimes spending nearly as much on plane tickets as the piece is worth.

But as Mr. Blum conceded, “Yes, there are speculators. But what I see is that some of the best collectors in the world also operate by digital images, coupled with rampantly seeing art."

"Hopping on a plane is not always possible, especially when there is a real, or manufactured, sense of urgency."

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Digital Images:- But a digital image often distorts a painting.

And that hints at the potential danger of buying art this way: the image of the work of art could, however subtly, misrepresent what the buyer perceives.

First there are the limitations of the digital image itself.

As a compressed file format, it is small enough to easily send via email or quickly open on the website, but the compression causes some loss of information.

Also, there are the inaccuracies created whenever a three-dimensional work is captured in two dimensions.

The texture of a painting especially, experts warn, is bound to get lost in translation.

A digital image will give you a general picture but usually will not deliver the surface detail.

You are not going to see the energy of the brushwork.

Another challenge is color, which can vary depending on computer and monitor settings.

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Condition: - A final caveat relates to condition, which is more of a problem for older pieces that have repeatedly changed hands.

Condition is the No. 1 issue for secondary market material.

Condition anxiety, however, is hardly unique to digital images.

Collectors often complain of reproductions in auction catalogs masking an artwork’s wear and tear.

Buying by a digital image is a lot like absentee bidding at auction.

But with at least one crucial difference: should clients be disappointed with their purchase of new work, most websites and galleries will let them return it.

Its one way that major galleries take the uncertainty out of buying art by using a digital image, much as other retailers take the risk out of buying clothes or electronics online.

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(Nicholas Forrest is an art market analyst, art critic and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. He is the founder of artmarketblog.com, writes the art column for the magazine Antiques and Collectables for Pleasure and Profit and contributes to many other publications. From his Blog 17 July 2007 "Great Artist, Or Just Great Painter.)

I think that one of the most important questions you should ask yourself when looking at investing in an artwork should be “is the creator of the artwork a great artist or just a great painter (or sculptor, drawer etc.)??”. 

The reason for this question is simple, there are plenty of extremely good painters, drawers, sculptors out there whose artistic careers may never venture beyond what may be considered a hobby. 

So with an art market that is driven by many factors other than aesthetics, merely buying an great painting by an amateur or hobbyist artist is very unlikely to make you any money in the future.

If you are purely interested in the aesthetics of an artwork then the term great painter and great artist are interchangeable. 

But as soon as you start looking at an artwork from an investment point of view the definition of a great artist has to change because in order to make a good investment decision you need to be able to make the distinction between a great painter and a great artist. 

If you are unable to identify the differences between a great painter and a great artist for the purposes of investment then the risk of making a bad investment is much greater.

In order to make a good investment in art you need to be able to remove any emotional influences and look purely at the likelihood of the artists work increasing in value. 

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*****

“…most people buy art quite simply because they fall in love with it.”

Linda Mitchel, journalist.

To Buy My Art: - Just contact me and discuss how and what.

But maybe a better plan is to visit my Studio where you may handle and look at the art directly.

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Updated August 2007.

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Oil on Canvas