Grows increasingly selling works of art through digital platforms. Understand why this phenomenon. Sets, investment opportunity or pure love? The risks of buying and the role of Blockchain.
Decorating a home, an office, give away a painting or even sell it if the author, everything can be done via a digital platform. There are now millions of Internet users who rely on its electronic screen device to acquire a piece, even without having previously seen or after having gone through a gallery or an exhibition to see it live. Many think that there is some resistance to their acquisition as works of art are very sensitive, usually expensive and totally vulnerable to counterfeiting. However, data confirm the opposite, the tendency to acquire art through e-commerce, It is a phenomenon that does not stop.
In 2016, online art sales reached 4,9 billions of dollars (9% the global market) according to the information ‘The Art Market 2017’, prepared by the consultant of the art market, Clare McAndrew. As for the statistics of English insurer Hiscox point out that the online art market grew 15% on the last year.
Platforms like Amazon, Maecenas, Artspace, and communities of artists on the internet are places to buy both very inexpensive art, works of emerging artists at a reasonable value or purchase works of world talents like Andy Warhol and Lucian Freud.
If we seek works with a lower price 250 na dollars Amazon Art, more of 20 thousand results. When the American Internet giant launched this initiative in 2013, the platform had a catalog 40.000 works of 4.500 artists, thanks to its association with more than 150 galleries and art works of distributors in the United States.
Gustavo Perino, Bachelor of expert artwork and co-founder of Givoa, a consultancy dedicated to the valuation and taxation of art comments on why the growth of this phenomenon: “The internet is a great tool democratization of access to information, and art should be enjoyed with all senses, digital access which today is the great works without travel permits to millions of people in the world close to know, for example, the Mona Lisa without traveling to the Louvre in Paris”. However, Perino warns "the risk of confusing this access can replace the experience of being in front of a work of art. As obvious as it is, I must say that they are two totally different experiences”.
In turn, Javier Goilenberg, CEO of Real Trends, leading platform for analysis and management tools to the Free Market vendors, analyzes that "access to art through the digital purchase is fantastic because it allows people who live far from cities access, buy and then receive the works of art in their homes; something that until recently was limited to big cities”. On the other hand, besides being a great benefit to the public, “is a great chance to direct access to the user, without the huge the area of trade figures that were in the past”.
In this sense, Perino said that "it is interesting what happens to the e-commerce phenomenon, since it obliges the classic figures of the art trade as representatives, galeristas or merchants, to adapt to these new times. There is no other choice but to reinvent forward technological changes”.
An ever-present risk
As we pointed out earlier, the purchase of works of art by any means, seja online ou off-line, always involves a risk. There is the possibility of being in front of a fake, or sale of illegal art - the famous black market -, use of art for money laundering or poorly allocated -pinturas pieces or sculptures said to be an author, but in reality were creations of other-.
In this sense, Perino warns that "we must know that there are no major differences in the care we should take when buying art through traditional means or the digital market. It is common to ask the seller a possibility of prior analysis of an expert before making the payment. If the work is original and does not have anything to hide should be something simple agreed between the parties”.
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Part of the marketplaces, Goilenberg stresses that, “which does not allow the virtual is a prior physical access to work and so the prestige of the seller or the platform are the key decision-making. Usually what happens is that in the online market appear `mega oportunidades' that are fraud, works of great masters at ridiculous prices and which have an apocryphal documentation. It is very important prior advice to purchase and verify the identity of the seller”.
block Chain, Your notary friend
As technology is always one step ahead of everything, this square of "Ancient Rome" XXI Century model, arose a new actor: o Blockchain. It is a shared and decentralized database, born in 2009 with the success of Bitcoin, who won the world alone and is now penetrating deep into all sectors of the global economy. Also called "power blocks" functions as a book for the registration of purchase and sale transactions or any other commercial-financial and administrative transaction.
It is nothing less than a large database, public, remote, inviolable, in which you can record digital files of all types. Each element stored there is dated and gives rise to a kind of signature or "hash", formed by a sequence of letters and numbers.
"The list of Blockchain is critical in this new era of digital commerce. The platform ensures the part origin and identity of the buyer both recording, causing the economic transaction is totally safe. We at Givoa, two years ago we have been working to identify all of our expertise with digital codes sent to Blockchain, allowing the shield and the immutability of the documents we issue ", concludes Perino.
Do not be in a square of Florence in Italy in the fifteenth century, but the passion for art through all these digital developments and the infinite possibilities that the virtual world offers with large galleries online, cause anyone to have a work of art in the living room of your home.