New apps make art shopping easier for new buyers
Two art apps were launched recently in Beijing to attract a growing middle-class audience that have potential to buy art either for their homes or for collections. Rather than simply establish online arttrading platforms, the newly released art apps — Ywart and Artcm — use more high-tech approaches and follow new trends on the social networking services such as live streaming.
With a photo of his or her room, a user can put the selected art work from the Ywart app in any place in the photo to see whether it matches with his room or not. The app includes an interactive option to put shows online using virtual reality.
Beijing-based Ywart was founded by Zhu Tong, a curator and a former museum director who has curated shows both at home and abroad over the past decade. It brings together established artists in China who want to sell their works, mainly paintings and sculptures, priced from a few thousand to hundreds of thousand yuan.
Zhu says he wants to help people to buy high-quality art online and project art out from museums to people’s daily lives.
A curator with lots of artist friends, Zhu is confident about his product. His art app introduces works by holding special shows online and offers professional introductions to each piece. It has works from about 3,000 artists, including established ones like Zhou Chunya, Zhong Biao and Xiang Jing and emerging young artists.
With high tech offering a better online art-shopping experience, Zhu’s app has attracted lots of celebrities, such as pianist Li Yundi, TV anchor Dong Qing and collector Wang Zhongjun, who is known for his purchases of Vincent van Gogh’s works. All three attended the lateSeptember launch ceremony to support the app.
In the past two years, lots of arttrading apps have come online. Many of them are struggling with problems such as low quality works, lack of buyers and offers of fake works.
Jiang Xiaochun, founder of Artcm from Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu province, says China has no shortage of art buyers and good artists, but it’s important to cultivate and educate art buyers.
“With the growth of our economy, society’s aesthetics urgently need to be improved,” he says.
Artcm works with art agents, galleries and art museums rather than with individual artists. It updates the latest information about art exhibitions held by more than 500 agents at home and abroad. Artworks and art items from these agents can be traded on the a pp.
To attract young buyers, Jiang says his art app will present shows to art lovers via live streaming. It will also be streaming live visits to famed artists’ studios to close the distance between artists and art lovers, offering a better understanding of artists’ works.
Jiang hopes all of this will help to educate younger buyers, especially those who have grown up with the internet.
Wang Kun, 29, who has bought art pieces online in recent years, says many potential buyers worry about the authenticity of works put online. But she can easily get in touch with artists via online platforms, especially emerging artists who are also good at using internet, to ensure authenticity of the works.
Wang says the experience of buying art online is as important as the authenticity of the works.
“Many of those involved in the art market are traditional dealers. But to appeal to young buyers like me, they should change their way of getting in touch with us and communicate with us. It’s not simply about setting up an online trading platform,” she adds.