The year of virtual art. Elisa Hernando. El Cultural
Nov 16, 2021
It has been a difficult economic scenario for galleries, museums and auctions. A year after the last ARCO fair, the landscape has changed: online sales and in several cities at once, Viewing Rooms and an unprecedented race towards digitalisation.
In February 2020, ARCO closed its doors with a successful sales success but with 93,000 visitors – 7% – fewer than the previous year. Of the 300 international collectors invited to the VIP programme, only 30 cancelled due to Covid-19. The main museums and institutions, the Reina Sofía, the Community of Madrid, DKV Seguros or the Helga de Alvear Foundation, confirmed purchases by artists such as Victoria Gil , Anna Bella Geiger, Feliza Bursztyn, Belén Rodríguez, Miguel Ángel Campano and Tobias Rehberger, and no one could have imagined the situation of the 2021 edition of the fair.
The coronavirus crisis has been a bad economic scenario for galleries, museums and auctions, which had to close their doors and stop abruptly, in a sector where in-person events are paramount. The effects were not long in coming: unemployment, reduced income and business bankruptcy. But it has also served to explore new ways of disseminating, promoting and selling art.
This is not the first economic recession that the market has had to absorb. Looking back over the past 30 years, between 1990 and 1993 , coinciding with the first Gulf War, demand contracted and auction prices fell by half . The next crisis to hit the market was at the end of 2008 , with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the subprime mortgage crisis. However, although auction prices then fell by 27% and the number of works worth more than 10 million dollars fell by 75% , in 2010 we can see the beginnings of a recovery in growth in the art sector, as indicated by Artprice.
Auction houses have weathered the halt in activity better than galleries throughout 2020, mainly because they already had platforms to be able to hold their events digitally. Sotheby's, for its part, began its commitment to online in 2019 and by March 2020 had already sold 10 times more on its platform than Christie's. In April it generated 6.4 million dollars, a record for its sales in this format and, throughout 2020, nine of the 10 most expensive works sold online have been through Sotheby's (including Basquiat's piece: Untitled (Head) , 1982), sold for 15.2 million dollars.
Christie's has been implementing new technological developments on its platform with the aim of increasing its online presence and sales in the "high-end" art segment. Thus, on July 10th it held an international event entitled 'ONE: the global sale of the 20th century'. For the first time an online auction took place in four cities at the same time: Hong Kong, Paris, London and New York, playing with the time differences. Thanks to technology, 3D and augmented reality, the works could be viewed both in the exhibition spaces and a simulation of how they would look on a wall in the collector's home could be made. The live auctions were broadcast over the internet and were a great success, with 80 works sold.
parts and sales amounted to more than 420 million dollars.
Gordillo and Uslé up for auction
In Spain, despite postponing their events to May, auctions have managed to recover, reaching interesting sales such as the sale of María Blanchard 's piece, Bogedón cubista , for 220,000 euros in Ansorena, Juan Uslé 's painting Soñé that you revealed sold for 140,000 euros at Fernando Durán (starting price 65,000) or Gordillo 's canvas sold in Segre a few days ago for 47,000 euros, when it was priced at 39,000.
As for fairs, the international trend has been a migration to an online format , which has sometimes been improvised, or a perpetual dance of dates while waiting for the conditions of the pandemic to change. The figures are discouraging: if in the first half of 2019 sales accounted for 46% of galleries' income, in 2020 they were 16% (according to the McAndrew report).
In Spain, ARCO is scheduled for July, remaining the first major international fair of the season following the cancellation of Art Basel in June. At this point, the holding of other national fairs such as Art Madrid, Estampa and Just Mad is also up in the air . These date changes are generating great uncertainty among galleries in a year that will go down in history as the one that has shaken the foundations of the face-to-face market.
For its part , Art Basel, faced with the impossibility of holding its events, opted for a virtual fair in Hong Kong that was a huge success . It had 250,000 virtual visitors compared to the 90,000 physical ones in 2019. Important sales were closed, such as Antony Gormley's sculpture for 500,000 dollars at the Continua gallery or Marlene Dumas' painting for 2.6 million at David Zwirner. Specifically, this American gallery is characterized by its great commitment to the online business with an exclusive department made up of 12 people. In mid-March, in the middle of the pandemic, David Zwirner said in The New York Times : “The art world is late if you compare it with other minority sectors.”
As for art galleries , both in Spain and internationally, they have launched an unprecedented race to digitalise themselves in an almost crazy process that should have been carried out over several years. More out of necessity than conviction, they have updated their websites, have strengthened their presence on social networks, especially on Instagram, and have launched viewing rooms with registration and password to access.
At the click of a button
Wanting to replicate the physical model of art on the Internet is not a symbol of success. You have to understand how sales work through this medium. For example, there is a maxim in the digital environment: products that do not have a price are not for sale or access to information must be as simple as possible and just a click away. On the other hand, digital marketing and communication strategies can be very beneficial but also costly and unprofitable if you do not know how to carry them out and measure them correctly.
Habits in the art market are changing. There will always be collectors who need to physically see the work to make their purchase, but with the new generations and the technological scenario that Covid has left us, it will become increasingly common to see exhibitions in other countries in 3D format , buy art online and attend talks on Zoom. Who knows what other applications will emerge. New audiences and new publics to explore that will coexist with the usual ones.
Elisa Hernando, The World
