How the Nazi Elite Plundered Europe's Art: Manuela Hoelterhoff
Review by Manuela Hoelterhoff
More Photos/Details
Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- ``The Rape of Europa,'' which airs on PBS on Nov. 24 at 9 p.m. New York time, has a number of heroes and heroines. My favorite is Maria Altmann.
It took a lifetime, but finally in 2006 the Austrian government -- with much lack of grace -- returned a few nice paintings by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele that the Nazis had pilfered from her uncle's Viennese mansion during World War II.
Altogether, Nazi elites stole an estimated million-plus artworks in the strangest melding of extermination and aesthetics the world has ever seen.
``The Rape of Europa'' documents how the lurid appetite for art coexisted with an equally powerful urge to torment and destroy.
Klimt's glittering 1907 portrait of Altmann's aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, spent the postwar years thrilling crowds at the Austrian State Gallery in the Belvedere. The Austrians sure didn't want to see her go.
Altmann, born in 1916 and even in her ninth decade a glorious vision in lavender cashmere and pearls, speaks eloquently of their perfidy and her triumph.
Supposedly, her aunt willed her pictures to the Austrian state, a very ambiguous reading of the text and one that ignores the fact that when she wrote her will in 1923, she hardly expected her beloved country to turn into a happy outpost for murderers and thieves.
Hitler's Pretensions
The identity of Altmann's determined lawyer makes her victory even more satisfying: E. Randol Schoenberg, the grandson of composer Arnold Schoenberg, another Jew who fled Austria and ended up in Hollywood, near Altmann.
Narrated by actress Joan Allen, ``The Rape of Europa'' is based on the remarkable book by Lynn H. Nicholas, who provides learned, lightly caustic commentary, especially about the Nazi elite.
Hitler, for all his cultural pretensions, made his first visit to Italy at the invitation of Mussolini. He spent only a few hours driving around that other art capital, Paris, after his 1940 summer victory.
Soon enough, the city's Jewish dealers were disappeared along with their treasures. The Jeu de Paume became the holding pen for loot and the setting for another heroine, art historian Rose Valland. Hiding behind her bun and glasses, Valland secretly recorded the destination of thousands of art works in a diary that proved immensely useful after the war.
Pianos, Linens
Even modest Jewish families were stripped of everything from pianos to linens in an effort to wipe out their memory and improve the lifestyle in the Heimat. The stuff would be trucked to a depot near the Austerlitz train station, sorted and cleaned.
A heartbroken Parisian forced to work there as a child remembers finding a suitcase filled with photos of his doomed family.
Hitler wanted his hometown of Linz to be as fabulous as Paris. There's a famous model he kept until the very end with an acropolis-like grouping of temples devoted to books, opera and art.
All little Linz ended up with was the Hermann Goering Gas Works (renamed) and a concentration camp down the road.
Not all art was deemed worthy of a new life in the new Reich. Hitler personally ordered the shelling of Warsaw's castle, since he considered the Poles as subhuman as Jews, and enjoyed seeing the city in flames. Krakow was spared because it was deemed Germanic, though the looting was major.
Hitler's curators had priority, leaving Goering, his fat No. 2, sniffing eagerly in the wings. ``Rape'' includes archival photos of his country estate of Carinhall, every square meter festooned with stuffed animals and Old Masters.
Even when he knew the war was over, the field marshal sent long trains filled with ``his'' art south to subterranean vaults. At least he didn't blow everything up.
Bad Sports
``The Germans weren't good sports about losing the war,'' says historian Nicholas. In Florence, the onetime pals of the Duce destroyed historic bridges just because they felt like it on their way out.
In Russia, the Germans burned Tchaikovsky's manuscripts after turning his country home into a motorcycle-repair shop. The scenes from the Siege of Leningrad are among the most harrowing. Devoted museum employees packed up about a million artworks before the Germans starved the city for three years. After the first winter's thaw, 46 corpses were removed from the cellars of the Hermitage.
The irony not lost on anyone is that in defeating the Nazis and saving Europe, the Allies destroyed a good deal of Europe's cultural heritage. ``Rape'' tells the complex story of Monte Cassino's bombing and the ongoing attempts at repair.
At the end, the American army's ``Monuments Men'' roll into view, struggling to safeguard fragile landmarks and artworks in the chaotic aftermath of the Reich's collapse. They began the process of restitution and nursing back to health lovely buildings that had had no say at all in the carnage.
``The Rape of Europe'' is a production of Actual Films in Association with Agon Arts & Entertainment and Oregon Public Broadcasting. It was written, directed and produced by Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole Newnham. The co-producer was Robert Edsel, a Texas oil and gas man turned author whose splendidly illustrated ``Rescuing Da Vinci'' is an important addition to the literature of loot. Information: http://www.rapeofeuropa.com.
A Collector's Edition with seven additional hours of interviews and more footage will be released on Dec. 10. There is also an educational program featuring the film, for which the title has been changed to ``The Greatest Theft in History.''
(Manuela Hoelterhoff is executive editor of Muse, Bloomberg's leisure and arts section. Any opinions expressed are her own.)
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Joan Giordano tonight 6-8pm NY
Opening Reception
547 West 27th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10001
Ph: (212) 239-1271
Joan Giordano
Serrano Contemporary
Wildlife Photography at its best
In December of 2000, Nick Brandt was in East Africa directing a music video for Michael Jackson. When the shooting for the video was complete, Brandt took some time off and visited some of the wildlife preserves. He took along a medium format camera and began to photograph the animals he saw from the car.
Now, years later, Brandt is out of the music video business. He devotes himself full time to photographing the animals of Africa.
Brandt’s approach to his work is unique…perhaps because he was never trained as a still photographer. Although he take photographs of wildlife, he is not really a wildlife photographer. He’s not interested in documenting the actual lives of real animals in the wild. Instead he creates romanticized images of animals in an equally romanticized setting.
His work tends to be either cinematic in composition or almost intimate portraits of iconic animals…or a combination of both. Brandt’s animals are idealized and unabashedly dramatic. They’re almost mythical in their perfection. Brandt creates these archetypal images deliberately; it is the heart of his art.
Brandt prefers to work close to the animals, usually in a vehicle. The vehicle is important not just for safety reasons, but because the animals are accustomed to vehicles; they’d run away from a human on foot.
He uses a Pentax 6X7 camera and only a few fast prime lenses (75mm, 105mm, 150mm and occasionally a 200mm). Those lenses allow him to get the narrow depth of field he finds so attractive. He shoots in black and white...unusual for wildlife. He frequently uses a heavy neutral density filter and often a red filter to darken the sky. Brandt claims he does very little photoshop manipulation of the image other than his signature vignetting and occasional adjustments to contrast and tint. Most of the unusual effects he obtains are, he says, created by trying odd things with the camera.
Brandt says, “I work in a very very impractical way - very manually - and lose a crazy number of potentially great shots with all the faffing around I do. But I do it because occasionally something great comes out of such impractical methods.”
A lot of wildlife and nature photographers criticize Nick Brandt. They call his work unrealistic, they claim he manipulates his images more than he admits, they say his images are sentimental, they say there is nothing natural about his view of nature.
And they’re right. Brandt’s photographs aren’t about nature at all. They’re not about real life. They are about depicting these animals as they exist in the minds of people throughout the world. Nick Brandt isn’t so much photographing animals as they exist; he’s photographing animals as we wish they existed. That’s his art.
“ Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth. ” — Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was an Andalusian-Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. As one of the most recognized figures in twentieth-century art, he is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, Guernica (1937).
Picasso’s work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1905–1907), the African-influenced Period (1908–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919).
In 1939–40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars.
Picasso’s final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colourful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picasso’s death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he didn’t need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picasso’s early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picasso’s firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his father’s tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picasso’s close friend from his Barcelona days who, for many years, was Picasso’s personal secretary.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for USD $95.2 million at Sotheby’s on 3 May 2006.
As of 2004, Picasso remains the top ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society.
"I've never believed in God, but I believe in Picasso." -Diego Rivera
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Artists Talk on Art - Panel at SVA
The Artist's Cut
A discussion of moving image art as a phenomenon both in fine art and the larger media worlds - where does it fit in, what defines it, what are its genres, where can it go- with the potential to affect both.
Moderator: Linda DiGusta, editor, Resolve40.com
Participants: Marcia Grostein, artist
Robert Ayers, artist and writer
Lee Wells, Ind. curator and co-founder of Perpetual Art Machine
Organizer: Linda DiGusta, editor, Resolve40.com
Friday, November 21, 2008
7-9 pm(doors open at 6:30pm)
School of Visual Arts
209 East 23rd Street, NYC
3rd Floor Amphitheater
Artists Talk On Art, founded in 1975, is the art world's longest running panel discussion series. Over the years ATOA has presented more than 6,000 artists in more than 900 programs. The organization has accumulated one of the largest audio- visual archives on contemporary art.
Artists Talk On Art
email: mail@atoa.ws
phone: (212) 779 - 9250
web: http://www.atoa.org
Ann Lydecker, Director of Programming for Artists Talk on Art
Admission is $7,
$3 for seniors, students or SVA alumni.
Current SVA students, faculty and ATOA season pass holders are admitted free.
Perspective from Design Art London
Dansk Møbelkunst Gallery - Scandinavian design from the 20th Century with particular emphasis on rare modernist furniture and lighting.
Bredgade 32, 1260 Copenhagen, Denmark
T +45 33 32 38 37
www.dmk.dk
info@dmk.dk
Scandinavian Design and Decorative Arts 1920 - 1970
“Design” is a many-facetted word that encompasses everything from the elaboration of technical issues in the plans for a man-made object to purely visual concerns about what it looks like. For philosophers, design implies a pattern and a purpose.
Today, however, “design” has become a cat-chall word referring to something with an artistic intelligence behind its conception, as in “designer furniture,” “design hotel,” etc. In the public consciousness, design has become synonymous with art. A good piece of design – whether it be a building or a teapot – is now seen as a work of art that just happens to have a purpose.
Design and art can no longer be kept apart. Like a good work of art, a good work of design can surprise, shock or sicken you, make you laugh or cry, but will never leave you indifferent.
Design comes in many packages, so to speak, and surrounds us in every moment of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. And the art of design is not a recent invention. “Design contre Design,” the exhibition at Paris’s Grand Palais, offers examples of human attempts to turn useful objects into art over the ages, among them a pair of faience saltcellars from the Bavarian court dating from 1576 and a Biedermeier armchair from 1820, but we can go back much further back in the history of China or Egypt, for example, to find countless illustrations of this basic human impulse to be surrounded by beautiful objects.
Like art, design cannot be governed by any particular idea of “good taste”, such as that represented by a certain vision of elegant black, brown or beige decor. Good design comes in all possible shapes, sizes, colours and materials, from Wieki Somers’ animal-skull teapot with a fur cosy to the pure, geometric lines of a table by Josef Hoffmann or the beautiful simplicity of a chair by Jean Prouvé. Jeroen Verhoeven’s “Cinderella table”, also in the Paris show, is pure sculpture, as are the animal-shaped pieces by François-Xavier Lalanne, which make little pretence to functionality, and Zaha Hadid’s “Iceberg” bench.
Design objects are setting dizzying records at contemporary art auction these days, and collectors are rediscovering once-forgotten designers like Prouvé. And the taste of the public, notably in fast-growing economies like China, India and Russia, is rapidly becoming more sophisticated and discerning.
“The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is the artistry.” - Bill Bernbach
The International Herald Tribune recently hailed “the emergence of a new design-art scene in London”, and one of its manifestations is DesignArt London, which will showcase works by some of the world’s most renowned post-war designers, ranging from Prouvé and Le Corbusier to today’s superstars, including Marc Newson, Zaha Hadid, Ron Arad and the Bouroullec Brothers. DesignArt London will offer an exciting new platform for design as respected artistic medium.
Behind DesignArt London is a wealth of experience and expertise in the art world, represented by SOC (Société d'Organisation Culturelle), a Paris-based company dedicated to the organization of art fairs.
SOC was founded by Stéphane Custot and Patrick Perrin in 1996. These two dynamic young Parisian art dealers have earned a reputation not only for their high standards of professionalism in their respective fields, but also for their skilful organization of one of Paris’s most highly respected art fairs, the Pavillon des Arts et du Design, the 12th edition of which was held in April 2008 in Paris’s Tuileries Garden. They also founded Paris’s prestigious Salon du Dessin in 1991.
Stéphane Custot is the co-owner, with Waring Hopkins, of Galerie Hopkins-Custot, founded in 1984 and now one of the leading specialists in 20th-century art and design, notably presenting the work of Botero, Mondrian, Dubuffet, Rouault, Vlaminck, Léger, Picasso, Matisse, Calder and many others. The gallery exhibits regularly at some of the world’s most important art fairs, including Art Basel, Art Basel Miami, Tefaf Maastricht and La Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris.
Patrick Perrin, the director of SOC, is the scion of a family of distinguished French art and antiques dealers specializing primarily in 18th-century French furniture and objets d’art. After running the gallery on Paris’s Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré for many years, Perrin now devotes himself to the organization of art fairs and other projects through SOC.
Every detail of the organization of both DesignArt London and the Pavillon des Arts et du Design is directly handled by SOC, from the initial conception to the selection of exhibitors and the committee of experts, catalogue design, and communications with the press, thr public and the exhibitors. SOC also manages all of the fairs’ technical aspects from start to finish.
This one-stop shop approach to art fair organization guarantees both exhibitors and visitors a quality experience at every level.
Thanks to its expertise in art fair organization, SOC has also been tapped as the operator for other prestigious art events: the Moscow World Fine Art Fair, the Salzburg World Fine Art Fair and the Biennale de Monaco.
SOC will soon extend its reach across the Atlantic with the introduction of Pavillon of Art and Design New York in the near future.
The growing interest in design art goes hand-in-hand with the booming modern and contemporary art markets, inviting debate as to what separates art from design. Today, pieces of design are not only incorporated into contemporary art auctions but have also fetched record-breaking prices. DesignArt London will offer an exciting new platform for design as a respected artistic medium.
Galerie Downtown François Laffanour
18 & 33 rue de Seine
75006 Paris, France
T +33 (0)1 46 33 82 41
Website : http://www.galeriedowntown.com
Art nouveau - Art Déco - Années 1940-1950
Buying Art Online: Web Galleries Bring Wave of New Buyers into the Art World
Hema Guha, "Togetherness" (2003). From PicassoMio ($2,375)
NEW YORK—It’s getting much easier to argue that online art galleries are significantly shifting the way art is bought and sold around the world.
Motivated by the chance to view hundreds, even thousands of works at a time, traditional collectors are turning to Web galleries in larger numbers.
“A lot of our clients are very experienced buyers in [bricks-and-mortar] galleries who have, in the last couple of years, transferred their interest in buying art to the Web,” said Allan Majotra, co-founder and managing director of PicassoMio, which operates two regular galleries in Spain and one of the world’s largest virtual ones, PicassoMio.com.
Added Angela Di Bello, director of the Agora Gallery in New York, which also operates the online gallery ArtMine.com, “For collectors who are too busy to gallery hop, the Internet can save a great deal of time. A collector can view hundreds of works of art in minutes, something impossible to do in a gallery.”
But an even bigger change that Web sites are helping to engineer is the introduction of thousands of new collectors—many of whom have never set foot in a traditional gallery—into the art market.
For neophytes, the Web is a much less intimidating way to buy and can be an attractive solution for those who have a strong interest in contemporary art—and can afford to buy it—but are uneasy about visiting traditional galleries.
“Most of our clients are first-time buyers of art,” said Roi Ophir, CEO of ArtToGet.com, which specializes in Israeli artists. “They love art, but until now they were a little afraid to buy. They see the Web as a friendly tool to get information and gain entry to the world of art. Most are spending $1,000 to $3,000 [on their first purchase].”
Rene Goodman, a spokesperson for Buy-Original-Art.com, which maintains a listing of sites that sell art online, said that 70 percent of the people who have contacted the site for advice over the past three years have never visited a regular art gallery. Because traditional galleries don’t always make the art-buying experience comfortable for new collectors, Goodman said, “many beginner collectors are increasingly turning to the Internet to explore and purchase original works of art.”
“The Web is a great tool for beginning collectors,” agreed Paige West, founder of the Mixed Greens gallery in New York, which also has an excellent (and e-commerce equipped) Web site. “Browsing online is a great way for beginners to train their eye. You can go online to find out what you like and don’t like.
“And the Internet offers a lot more affordable art,” West added. “For people who are nervous about making their first purchase, the Web is a good place to start because you’re generally not spending unmanageable sums of money.”
Online galleries are also a great convenience for those who live far from the centers of the art world. “Although we have [clients] from areas such as New York, Los Angeles and Paris, most of our buyers don’t live in major cities,” said Ophir, who also recently opened a bricks-and-mortar gallery, Dollinger Art Project, in Tel Aviv.
Of course, both experienced buyers and new ones can benefit from the fact that online galleries have an infinite amount of virtual wall space and can show an unlimited amount of work from any number of artists. “The selection online is incredibly phenomenal,” said Majotra.
And while actual galleries, with rent to pay, can be understandably leery of mounting a weeks-long exhibition of work by an emerging artist, it’s much less risky to devote a section of a Web site to new talent. This means online galleries can be a great place to discover artists not showing anywhere else.
“Our site has hundreds of promising artists not represented by [bricks-and-mortar] galleries,” said Ophir. “We’re providing both a stage for those artists and an opportunity for audiences to purchase their work.”
Buying Art Online: 10 Tips to a Better Web Buying Experience
Driving to Tomorrow
Digital Print, edition of 50
12" x 18"
USD $785
Online galleries have many benefits. They offer a huge selection of artists, a more comfortable and convenient environment for new buyers—are helping to drive a shift in the way art is bought and sold.
But while buying art online does have certain advantages over trekking from gallery to gallery, it also poses a number of unique challenges as well. Here are 10 tips to help you maximize your Web shopping experience.
Tip #1: Beware the Junk
For better, but usually for worse, anyone can set up an online gallery—and thousands have. Inevitably, this translates into a lot of very bad art and can mean wading through mountains of schlock to discover any gems.
“The unsupervised, sometimes wild nature of the Internet still presents some problems in buying and selling original art,” said Rene Goodman, a spokesperson for Buy-Original-Art.com, which maintains a listing of sites that sell art online. “Some of the finest dealers are online, introducing brilliant artists and works that couldn’t be reached otherwise. Unfortunately, the great majority—as much as 90 percent—of art-selling Web sites are un-curated and offer amateurish art far below the standards of what can be found in the brick-and-mortar market.”
Agreed Paige West, founder of the Mixed Greens gallery in New York, which also maintains a highly regarded Web site: “When we started MixedGreens.com in 1998, we actually had a lot more competition back then. A lot of the sites had an open-door policy [with regards to artists] and that led to a lot of bad-quality art. The sites that have survived are selective and take more of a curatorial approach.”
So the solution to the schlock problem—if you don’t trust your own eye—is to look for sites that have some sort of sophisticated screening process with regards to the art they display. Sites that have curators or juries generally promote that fact heavily; those that don’t are generally immediately obvious.
Tip #2: Let’s Get Physical
In addition to sites that are curated, another way to ensure a positive experience is to stick with sites that also operate an actual, bricks-and-mortar gallery.
“All the online galleries I would recommend also have a physical space,” said West. “This is key. When you know the business has an actual gallery space, this means those running it most likely are more knowledgeable about art and the sales and shipping process.”
Tip #3: Virtual Sites, Actual People
No matter how appealing the art looks in a virtual space, be sure there is an actual person on the other end of the computer.
“Most credible companies provide detailed information about themselves,” Goodman added. “It is imperative that they have a physical address and a customer-service phone number—I wouldn't buy if they don’t.”
Before buying, contact the staff by phone or email and see how well (and how quickly) they respond.
Tip #4: Demand Authentication
As when making a purchase in a bricks-and-mortar gallery, buyers should demand some proof of the work’s authenticity. PicassoMio.com, for example, a site recently given the “Best of the Behemoths” award by ArtInfo, has this policy stated on its Web site:
“Most of our artworks are signed (and numbered, in case of editions) by the artist. If the artwork is not signed, a signed Artist’s Authenticity Statement may be available upon your request. This document certifies the artwork’s authorship, the title, year of creation, and dimensions. … Further, we can also provide you with an Independent Party Authenticity Endorsement with your purchase.”
Have a healthy suspicion of sites that don’t offer a similar authenticity standard.
Tip #5: Establish a Budget, Define Your Goals
“The Internet offers a very wide range of artworks in all price scales, so it is very important to establish a budget before embarking on the shopping expedition,” Goodman said. “I would also advise buyers to be clear about their goals for purchasing art—whether it is to develop a collection that may have some investment value or just to decorate one’s walls.”
And as with any art purchase, Angela Di Bello, director of the Agora Gallery in New York, which also operates the online gallery ArtMine.com, reminds us: “Always buy what you love.”
Tip #6: Do Your Homework about the Work, the Artist and the Site
When you spot a work you like, ask for as much information about the work (how, for example, does it tie into the rest of the artist’s oeuvre?) and about the artist (schooling, exhibitions, sales history, etc.) as you can get.
And make sure the Web site you’re dealing with is a legitimate business and offers secured purchasing. Check out what the press has written about the site, and read the buyer testimonials (and ask if you can actually contact a buyer or two for an in-person recommendation).
And because a buyer in the virtual world has the disadvantage of not being able to see the physical work, no question should be considered off-limits. “[When buying online], one has the [right] to ask questions one might not feel comfortable asking in a physical gallery,” said Allan Majotra, co-founder and managing director of PicassoMio.
Tip #7: Don’t Rush
It’s easy to get caught up in the moment, especially since the Internet offers instant gratification to buyers. But Goodman said it’s important to take it slow, especially for beginning collectors.
“My first advice to anyone before buying art online is to decide not to purchase anything for at least a month,” she said. “This month should be spent doing intensive online exploration—browsing as many online galleries as possible, looking at ads and pictures in art magazines. This is an important process that teaches the potential buyer to recognize his own unique taste in art and to educate his eye to distinguish what he likes, what he finds himself connecting to on the emotional level and what he is returning to again and again.”
Tip #8: Many Happy Returns
Every expert we asked for online buying tips stressed this point: Make sure the online gallery allows you a chance to change your mind once a work arrives and to return it, after a reasonable period (usually one week), without any hassles.
“I simply wouldn’t deal with anyone that doesn’t [offer a reasonable return policy],” Goodman said.
Majotra pointed out that PicassoMio allows buyers to return an artwork up to seven days after they receive it. “Ninety-nine percent of them keep it,” he added. “They tend to like it even more once they see it in person.”
Tip #9: Stay Low
Mixed Greens’ West advises that when buying editioned work, which is much more common online than original pieces, one should focus on work in editions of 10 or under.
Tip #10: Don’t Forget the Real World!
This is maybe the most important point of all. While gallery hopping online has many advantages, and can become addictive, nothing can replicate viewing a work in person—and getting to know gallerists, artists and your fellow art lovers at openings and exhibitions is certainly one of the great rewards of collecting.
As West observes, “the big downside to buying online is that experiencing art in person is a lot more fun.” By Bryant Rousseau, Jacquelyn Lewis
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