Another Look at Amazon Art

The NY Times takes another look at the online Amazon art store. According to the article the Amazon art store now has over 180 galleries offering more than 43,000 pieces of work.  The article does note that early reporting got more enthralled with the few very high end pieces which are not representative of the offerings.  Amazon also states it is not curating the online offerings, so the buyer needs to beware.  Sellers pay Amazon a fee between 20% and 5% depending upon the selling price.

The article also points out that many of the galleries listed are well known and well regarded, but for many, they are unknown, so let the buyer and the appraiser beware.

The NY Times reports

To date, the company has signed up more than 180 galleries and offers more than 43,000 two-dimensional works from about 4,500 artists, ranging from “Untitled (Dollar Bill),” by Ryan Humphrey of Queens, selling for $10, to Monet’s 1868 portrait of his son Jean ($1.4 million), and, at the top of this very big heap, Norman Rockwell’s 1941 painting “Willie Gillis: Package From Home” ($4.85 million). Ms. Nielsen offered several of her digital prints for $45 each.

The Monet and the Rockwell proved to be catnip for the news media and targets for snide remarks, many of them on Amazon’s Web site. The economist and critic Tyler Cowen (a regular contributor to The New York Times), appraising Amazon’s higher-priced wares on his blog, Marginal Revolution, wrote: “I’ve browsed the ‘above 10k’ category, and virtually all of it seems a) aesthetically abysmal and b) drastically overpriced. It looks like dealers trying to unload unwanted, hard-to-sell inventory at sucker prices.”

The company did not create Amazon Art to sell Impressionist masterpieces. As its representatives were quick to point out, 95 percent of the works offered cost less than $10,000. About a third of them cost between $250 and $1,000.

Some dealers put just a handful of images online. Most have a few hundred. RoGallery, in Long Island City, Queens, has more than 6,000 images on Amazon Art. Ugallery, in San Francisco, and Zatista, in Philadelphia, two of the best-known online galleries, have more than 4,000 each.

Sellers pay a commission that starts at 20 percent for works up to $100, and decreases to 5 percent for works over $5,000. Some pass the cost on to their artists; others do not. Customers wary of fraud must rely on the reputation of the galleries, and on Amazon’s longstanding policy of allowing its customers to return merchandise within 30 days for any reason.

Amazon makes no claims about the quality and imposes no taste criteria. “We are not doing any curation,” Peter Faricy, Amazon’s vice president and general manager of Amazon Marketplace, said in a recent interview. “We look to the galleries for that.”

Mr. Faricy called the sellers on Amazon Art “the most well-regarded and reputable galleries in the world.” With few exceptions, however, the names ring no bells. There is no Pace, no Gagosian. The list runs to galleries like Masterworks Fine Art in Oakland, Calif.; Edgewater Gallery in Middlebury, Vt.; and Borghi Fine Art in Englewood, N.J.

Source: The NY Times