The limitless and essentially free space available on the Internet could enable many more artists to show their work publicly and reach people who it resonates with—provided the public has a reasonable way to find it, without having to wade through too much material that’s more reflective of ego or delusion than actual talent. A common, shared site, where capable independent taste mavens bring the best work to the attention of site visitors, could do everything for visual artists that it would for musicians—and then some.
The retail nature of online mavens’ endeavors would be more immediately apparent in presenting painting and sculpture than songs. By creating subsets of the larger whole of the shared web site, people who feel they have good taste in art could have what amount to their own virtual galleries, without ever needing to provide brick-and-mortar exhibit space, develop their own stable of affiliated artists, or amass a network of collectors.
A widely-known online hub for the visual arts would also enable many more people to find original art that’s within their budgets, rather than having to settle for generic “wall hangings” from a furniture store. This would benefit not only those who live in less populous regions, but also many people in major metropolitan areas. In Southern California, for example, a great deal of art is produced, but most people don’t even know where the major gallery districts are. Even if they happen to stumble upon a gallery, many people find the atmosphere off-putting. (For example, while checking out an abstract in a gallery in Beverly Hills, I was approached by a staff member who, apparently believing I was a rube, took it upon herself to explain to me, in the most pretentious tone imaginable, that it was “about Art.”)
A shared online site for the visual arts could not only provide potential art buyers a more relaxed and accessible environment, but also provide a far greater selection of work—especially if it went beyond typical gallery sites, which commonly only organize their contents by the name of the artist (which isn’t of much help to people who aren’t already familiar with the artists). A good site should enable visitors to also find artworks by subject matter, style, size and shape, overall color palette, and the distance they would be willing to drive to see a work in person.
With an expanded selection of material that can be filtered in this more useful manner, and with trusted, selectable taste mavens working day in and day out to bring the best work to the surface, this type of environment would be superior in many ways to our current gallery-based model.
To enable artists to show and sell their work themselves, without needing gallery representation or having to interrupt their work to deal with prospective customers, the site could enable them to mark their work as needing advance arrangements for in-person viewing, and then show whatever contact information the artist was comfortable sharing (for example, an e-mail address).
Other
artists could
choose to have their galleries continue to handle the business end of
things,
including showing their work. In
this
event, the online service would also benefit the galleries, by
expanding their
reach to a lot of people who would otherwise never have heard of them.
The main drawbacks for visitors would be their inability to see an artwork “in the flesh” before purchasing it, and the potential for damage in shipment. However, since some galleries already sell a substantial amount of original artwork online, presumably a good return policy and reliable expertise in shipping techniques can go far to mitigate these concerns.
From the standpoint of a shared site, the main challenge art presents is the unfeasibility of directly processing the purchase transactions. Without knowing what artwork a visitor liked well enough to actually buy, and whose recommendation(s) led him there, it would be more difficult to ensure that the right recommender(s) get paid.
One potential workaround: use another form of interaction as a proxy for the purchase. For example, whenever a potential buyer uses the online service to arrange to see a piece of art in person, the "taste maven" whose recommendation connected the person to the artwork could be paid a small referral fee. The online service could collect this fee from the artist whose work was discovered. To ensure that the costs to the artist remain reasonable and affordable, a fee cap could be set at, say 10% of the asking price of the artwork. In addition, a sliding payment scale could be used, where the first referral to a piece of art might cost a dollar or two, while later referrals would only cost a penny or so, until the overall payment cap is reached—at which point any subsequent referrals would be free.
What about sales that don’t involve making special arrangements to see the work? As one possibility, a similar sliding scale, although much lower-priced, might be applied to simple user clicks to see a larger image of an artwork online. Other methods could also be tried out, until the most satisfactory technique was identified.
For now, though, all of the features described above except for the referral fees have already been implemented—on the same experimental live site that utilizes taste mavens to surface good independent music.
