Art Market – The Big Detachment
Case Study led by Marek Claassen
Tuesday, 3 November 2015 | 15.30h-16.15h
space
The art market has long been led by subjectivity and personal motivation, but it now faces a disruptive force: the digital world. After the music industry and the book market, it is now the art world’s turn to meet the internet’s power of objectivity. In order to build an objective, professional tool that offers an accurate reflection of the quality of an artist’s work, we need to study the ways in which artists’ careers are currently ranked.
In a professional market, data is king. Businesses need to conduct analyses, and will be analysed in return. How do they do this? By using concrete, statistical information the customer, previously called the collector, becomes anonymous, as does the gallery and its artists. Does this “objective” system of classification grant transparency?
In this new-world scenario a mature market evolves out of revolution i.e. change. For the art market this revolution means regulation. In order to develop the market, the key players must establish a secure environment for the customer: certified information, comparable processing standards, availability of works.
Standards are the core of any functioning market and are a way to make the incomparable comparable. ArtFacts.Net Director, Marek Claassen will explain how to establish a standardised measuring system for artistic careers, and what an econometric evaluation for galleries might look like. In addition Marek will cover how galleries can implement these industry standards in a small business.
