From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
So Long, Sothebys.com
Fine-art auctions go offline.
This week, Sothebys.com will cease to operate and a chapter of art-market history will come to a close. The auction giant's ill-fated foray into online auctions, launched in 1999, was the last man standing in the battle to bring sales of fine art to the Net.
It now joins unprofitable competitors like iCollector.com, Artnet.com, ImportantAuction.com, eHammer.com and Antiqnet.com--all announced with much ballyhoo in the late 1990s--which have already been forced to shut down their auction operations. The online sale, so recently hailed as the future of the art-auction business, is now part of its past.
What happened? With other Internet sales skyrocketing, why did no one--not even the powerful Sotheby's--succeed in flogging enough Warhol paintings and Chippendale chairs on the World Wide Web to make a decent profit? Because it is a losing battle: Everything that makes art compelling is blunted by the virtual, one-click world of the Net.
Back in the frothy year of 1999, this realization had not yet dawned. The Internet was the answer to everything--including how to make the art market a much larger, more profitable place. Money was flowing and everyone was a potential collector. Online bidding would render geography and time irrelevant. Busy executives would log on at 3 a.m. and bid on a Monet in their pajamas. Computer geeks would bypass snooty auction-house receptionists, browse online, and get hooked on Biedermeier furniture. Elitism, and every other limitation to mass collecting, would be deleted with the click of a mouse.
The ambitious leadership at Sotheby's saw an expansion into cyberspace as a chance to control a much bigger piece of art-world territory. In its traditional bricks-and-mortar configuration, Sotheby's was limited to the lots it could evaluate, catalog, store and sell from the rostrum each year. By partnering with Amazon (and later, eBay) and using its online platform to auction not only its own consignments but objects owned (and cataloged) by a network of art and antiques dealers, Sotheby's could make a profit on its competitors' sales as well as its own.
For once, arch rival Christie's would be no competition: It had inexplicably decided to pass on online sales (attracting much derision for fuddy-duddy thinking). A dozen other entities--both existing auction houses and e-startups, were more hopeful. By late 1999 the Web was dotted with their sites. They all sat back and waited for the money to roll in.
It didn't happen. The owners of the money-generating lots--the Monets, Warhols and Chippendale chairs--had no interest in selling them on the Net, nor did the buyers wish to purchase them there. These golden geese continued to be offered the way they sold best--in real-time sales with glossy printed catalogs and elegant auctioneers wielding polished wooden gavels.
Mass marketing and one-click access are no friends to the mystique of Big Ticket art. The perception of rarity and exclusivity that supports its price is diluted with every grainy appearance--like a pair of Gap pants or a music CD--on somebody's desktop PC. Nor is the chance to bid at 3 a.m. in one's pajamas much of a draw: The experience of a traditional auction acquisition--consummated after many viewings, flattering attention from departmental specialists, and a spirited bidding war with a rival in a Chanel suit and important jewelry--is an enduring part of its allure.
Online auctioneers had no trouble attracting less pricey material. Prints, photographs, Victorian furniture, third-tier paintings and art pottery in the $250 to $25,000 range--the unsold detritus of dealer inventories everywhere--flooded onto their sites. Many of these objects sold perfectly well--but not in the huge numbers required to fund the revolution. True, millions of people could log on and bid. But without looking, touching, and feeling that unique thrill one gets in the presence of something ineffably beautiful and satisfying, they didn't want to.
Turning casual Web browsers into collectors is a job intrinsically unsuited to the Internet--a medium that severely limits the opportunity to experience works of art. eBay has no such Pygmalion aspirations: It sorts the paintings on its site by dominant color and subject matter, and supports their sale with auctions of water heaters and tattoo supplies. It is still going strong. But by 2001, other auction sites were going, going, and now, two years later, they are gone.
