Wise to Art

One might imagine that it’s thanks to a highly active marketing strategy that artprice has gained its position as one of the top art market references on the web. Artprice develops consciously an international profile and has become the site that is most visited globally, be it that it still lags behind artnet in total audience figures. Thanks to mirror sites in Spanish, Italian and French, artnet does even better than artnet in Europe, who limits itself to English and German versions of its site. As with artnet, which was born in Germany before partly migrating to the States, artprice is of European origin, and more precisely of French. Auxiliary to the world of fine art, artprice’s services touch design and antiques. For a brief history of artprice, see Wikipedia’s article.

As to services there is very little formal difference in functionality between the two mentioned platforms. The difference lies foremost in the aspect and in the contents. Artprice clearly lists a greater number of lesser known artists - with few or insignificant auction records - and is therefore maybe a more comprehensive tool than artnet. As does artnet, artprice brings breaking and in-depth news about the international art market while offering online subscription services to past and present auction prices in venues across the world. The website provides summary international gallery listings with sales opportunities under the formula ‘artprice stores’, artists’ biographies and their various market indices, auction-house news and special reports on art market events and tendencies. It distinguishes itself from its rival in proposing a general art market index and an art pricing valuation service, but lacks in turn artnet’s new on-line auction feature, auction house listings, artists monographs and the latter’s magazine feature.

It’s above all in the interface that the difference is marked. The French design is full of clutter and complication whereas the German/American site is sleek and sober. Of course this is a matter of personal taste. The juxtaposition of artprice’s essentially artistic management team versus the clear no-nonsense business management model of artnet will probably account for this difference.

Home page

Artprice’s choice of contrasting black and whites gives the site an unnecessarily hard edge and is not pleasing for the eye. Brash and complicated design completes the non-inspiring picture of an aggressively commercial site. Beyond the first impression the site is functional and contains an impressive amount of useful data.

Top bar position from left to right ‘home’, ‘My Artprice’, ‘Artprice images’, ‘My store’, ’Ads’, ‘Products’, ‘Contact, ‘Language choice’. Drop-down menus direct you to a humdrum choice of other services presented rather pell-mell.

The price database

The price database is of course not unique to artprice but represents its core feature. As said, the great advantage with artprice is the sheer number of artists listed. Artprice’s reactivity to the art market is excellent and the featuring of illustrated catalogues a very useful feature.

The stores

Artprice offers art professionals and collectors alike to feature an unlimited number of items under this unique annual subscription service. The modest fee allows for second and third tier professionals to get their art to the collectors in a simple and highly cost-effective fashion.

The editorial services

Artprice newsletters
Artprice offers a subscription service to a free periodic e-newsletter.

Conclusion:

Complimentary to artnet for top tier collectors, artprice becomes indispensable for those collecting affordable art and less pricy items. Artprice has an excellent presence on the art market but suffers from lack of style, what becomes evident in the rather crude web design.