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On your homepage at Artsted.com you say “to use AI to help identify tomorrow’s blue-chip artists”. Could you please expand on the use of AI? How does your technology work?
So, it would be fair to say that our AI model is currently being tested as we are having more users join the platform and therefore more data to perfect it. The data to train the initial evaluations algorithm was taken from open-source auction house records (openly available auction results published directly on major auction house websites so we could match a market performance to a database of 400.000 artists. As a result, our proprietary algorithm (a unique algorithm, built entirely by our development team – based on the publicly sourced data) works the same way, reacting to the “trigger” data input, that artists provide, that the algorithm goes on to consider as significant for their career: an article in Artforum, a solo show in a mid-tier gallery, a selection for a biennial, an art prize shortlist are a few examples of the categories of data that influence the end result.
To put it quite simply, as an output we provide a number of charts and indicators for each of the emerging artists on the platform that points to their career performance. Along with that to guarantee further transparency we provide historical sales data for each artist, so all of the past pricing and past sales within our platform benchmarks could be used for reference.
How do you define a “blue-chip artist”?
A blue-chip artist like Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso – to name a few, is someone who is very sought-after on the market. I guess if I had to give a specific definition in terms of market values, we are looking at prices starting with 1 million USD. Obviously, this is a tremendous barrier to entry for the 99% of art buyers globally, so Artsted is looking to give a broad selection of emerging artists who are focused on building professional careers in the industry (BFA, MFA students and graduates for the most part) and then enable collectors to consider buying emerging artists with a vision of long-term investment. While we do not specifically state that monetary value is the only value that should be appreciated about art in general, and I personally do not believe that collecting art is driven only by investment motives, I do believe that we can not turn the blind eye to this aspect of the art market, which is inherently connected to the phenomenon of collecting.
Please share any relevant case-study or success story.
A relevant story for our initial research was actually a 2018 study by Amy Whitaker where buying emerging artists’ work was compared to venture capital investment, on the collector’s side. An example given in the paper was that works by Robert Rauschenberg outperformed the S&P 500 by between 2.75 and 156.36 times over the last 40 years, while works by his artist friend & colleague Jasper Johns outperformed the S&P 500 by between 20.64 and 1,086.67 times. That really pushed us to further seek to create tools that resemble the stock market ones and make accessible analytics part of our product. As per the Artsted success stories in identifying future blue-chip (or near blue-chip) artists, we do hope to be able to share those very soon.
Many start-ups with similar business models have failed in the past few years. What is your plan to succeed?
Totally. Some of the past examples of startups using AI or Blockchain technology to foster market transparency have indeed failed or did not create a change in the market, since they were oriented at a limited niche, or didn’t have a well-defined user. It could also be true that at the intersection of art & technology, as a founder, it is either you are coming from an IT background, or an arts background, so it is hard to balance those fields of expertise. What we believe is that it is a great benefit to be able to analyze the errors of similar ventures that have failed, and work out a strategy that will be more feasible, both in terms of usability, technology, market applications, and general vision. I can only assume what those errors were since not one of those companies provided a statement on why they ultimately had failed, but I can presume there was the error of trying to provide the market with something that was not much needed – in a bigger picture. We are always trying to listen to the end-users, following the “Lean startup” model, having multiple interviews with artists and collectors, pivoting in the process.
Could you please talk about your competitors?
As a marketplace that is working with contemporary emerging artists, our possible future direct competitors are other platforms like Saatchiart and Artfinder, that cater to the same user category. Besides that in a general market landscape, it is fair to say that any small or mid-tear gallery could be considered our potential competitor since our mission is to take on the intermediary role between the artist and the collector.
On the technology side, there are no market leaders of competitors that would provide that kind of data analytics on the primary market. The closest one gets to getting insight on artists’ careers through an algorithm is Artfacts, which are more of a service for existing market insiders and art business owners since the subscription is quite costly. Anyone who has ever dealt with aspiring or retail art collectors will support my statement that most people when buying art, wish to have an extra layer of reassurance on whether they are getting a good deal and making a “good investment” decision – that is why I believe the primary market analytics service could well deserve its own niche in the online art space.
What are your future plans with Artsted?
I also believe that the recent NFT movement may be creating new pathways and trajectories for us to reconsider blockchain technology in the arts. We are Artsted are currently working on a solution that will connect the traditional and the digital art markets, giving a platform to artists working in traditional media to be able to access this new unexplored space and its vast liquidity – so do stay tuned with our updates! Great things are in the making NFT-wise!
