art news

Bruce Livingston interview about Saatchi Online

artnews — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 10:22:56 +0000

David Norden interviewed Bruce Levingston about Saatchi Online

Listen

Click below to listen to the answers of the 43 minutes interview or left click to download the interview on your computer:

OK the Questions from the interview with Bruce Livingstone :

- Hi Bruce Livingstone, I am glad to have you here tonight you are involved in quite important projects and your last one is Saatchi Online.

You have completely reconceived it, and will present us your project today .
As a founder of iStockphoto you seemed to have great ideas for the future of Saatchi Online.

It is now an open social platform and marketplace which quickly drew 80,000 artists globally and it provides the art community with a new way to discover, share, exhibit, promote, discuss and sell art online. Can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit more

- Bruce, You say you garantee satisfaction of buyers, but who is curating the works, how do they know they are buying something valuable? Are there some quality criteria to be selected as an artist, or can anybody show anything? Even junk? Or is there a quality selection by a jury, or museum curators,
the artists or the public? An online vote system? What for the artists who fail.

- How can customers be assured to get the goods. Are the artists paid after delivery? Do you work like an Escrew service.

-Apart from the 30 % commission, is there any other costs involved for the sellers and the buyers?

- Do the artists have to pass a selection procedure? Must the works be send to Saatchi, or do they remain at the artists places?Who has the copyright? When does the artists receive there unsold works back? Are there some things to keep in mind?

-Are there some minimum or maximum prices for the prices? Technical limitations of the artworks?

-What are “Shadows” and what should we understand with “head to head competition”

- Bruce you came from istockphoto to Saatchi Online. What is the main difference between selling
photography and Art works online. How did the market change the last years, and what are the new
challenges for the artists and for the website owners. How do you see the future trends ?

- You speak about social media. How can an artist interact with buyers online, and how can you
differentiate between artists and clients? Also what is your actual % of arrtists and clients in the system.
What is for an average artists the ¨% of chances to make a living out of your system. Any success stories?

- What is the average amount that people spend into your system, and how many are buying, do you
have some numbers to give us. For how much are you selling in total on the system? Is it seasonal?
What ¨% of the artists are earning money from this system?

I read you are selling” printed canvas”, are these limited series, does the artist need to put
a real signature on them? Who is taking the production costs?

How about the social integration, is there facebook integration? Can people like, and comment or rate works on your site? On the site I see that for works there is a nice slideshow, but the comment from facebook are not embeded into Saatchi online.
What is the difference with a simple shopping cart?

What is the Events section about?

Are you only selling “contemporary art”? What about antiques and other fields.
I am a specialist in African Art and I know many dealers struggling with selling online,
and having plenty of backstocks.

Any collaboration possible in the future, some kind of “licensing” deal of the system in other areas like antiques experts ?

Thanks for the interview will post it soon

David Norden
skype: nordend or mailto:david.norden@telenet.be

Friday 18 march 2011
Bruce Livingstone about Saatchi Online. Click below to listen to the answers of left click to download the interview on your computer:

Saatchi Online Revamped as Social Marketplace for the Discovery and Purchase of Art from Emerging Artists

Charles Saatchi, who originally conceived of the site, remains a major shareholder along with Balderton Capital.

LOS ANGELES, Ca.- Saatchi Online, which re-launched in beta five months ago, now begins connecting its 100,000+ artists with potential buyers who have been visiting the site in growing numbers since October 2010. On March 16, 2011, Saatchi Online started selling pieces of artwork from emerging artists. Saatchi Online offers the highest earnings in the industry, giving 70 percent to the artist.

Saatchi Online manages all aspects of transactions and logistics from artists to buyers. The site even offers a seven-day money back guarantee, no matter the initial cost of the piece. Other unique features of Saatchi Online include;

• powerful social networking tools,

• fee-free peer-to-peer competitions called “Showdowns,” and,

• the incredible opportunity to have one’s work displayed at the Saatchi Gallery in London and other locations around the world.

Charles Saatchi, who originally conceived of the site, remains a major shareholder along with Balderton Capital. The site has been completely reconceived under the direction of former iStockphoto founder and CEO, Bruce Livingstone. The new social marketplace quickly attracted 100,000 new artists because it provides the art community with a new way to discover, share, exhibit, promote, discuss and sell art online.

“We have given powerful social and technical tools to the global art community, accelerating meaningful connections between artists and collectors,” said Bruce Livingstone, CEO of Saatchi Online. “People crave a sense of community with those who share their passions, their obsessions and even their trials. I fully expect several of the art luminaries of the next century to be discovered here.

saatchi gallery online

artnews — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:10:19 +0000

saatchi gallery online

The New Saatchi Online Unveils Social Marketplace for the Discovery and Purchase of Art from Emerging Artists

iStockphoto Founder Bruce Livingstone Kicks Off First Physical Exhibit at SCOPE NEWYORK

LOS ANGELES, Calif.: March 2, 2011—Saatchi Online, which re-launched in beta five months ago, will now begin connecting its 80,000+ artist members with potential buyers who have been visiting the site in growing numbers since October 2010. On March 15^th, Saatchi Online will start selling artwork from global emerging artists with prices set by the artists. Saatchi Online offers larger commissions and royalties than any other art site. Other unique features include powerful social networking tools, fee-free peer-to-peer competitions and the unique opportunity to have one’s work displayed at the Saatchi Gallery in London and other locations around the world.

Charles Saatchi, who, along with Balderton Capital, remains a major shareholder in the site, originally conceived of Saatchi Online. The site has been completely reconceived under the direction of former iStockphoto founder Bruce Livingstone. It is now an open social platform and marketplace which quickly drew 80,000 artists globally because it provides the art community with a new way to discover, share, exhibit, promote, discuss and sell art online.

“We live in a time when the social and technological tools around us are tearing down global barriers and making frequent, meaningful connections easier than ever before,” said Bruce Livingstone, CEO of Saatchi Online. “People crave a sense of community with those who share their passions, their obsessions and even their trials. Saatchi Online will be home to art lovers and artists everywhere. I fully expect several of the art luminaries of the next century to be discovered here first.”

Buying and Selling Art at Saatchi Online

Buying art on Saatchi Online shows your patronage and that you care about how artists are funded to create their next great work. Artists selling through Saatchi Online receive the highest commission ever paid in the online art industry at 70 percent. There is no risk in purchasing artwork from the site and each piece is 100 percent satisfaction guaranteed by Saatchi Online (not including shipping).

Saatchi Online at SCOPENEWYORK

Saatchi Online will re-introduce the brand with its first physical exhibit and offline sale at the SCOPENEWYORK International Contemporary Art Show March 2-6 (Booth Number A55). Those who visit the booth will get to see Saatchi Online artworks curated by Rebecca Wilson, associate director of the Saatchi Gallery in London on display and for sale at SCOPENEWYORK. In addition, a selection of the winning artworks from the Saatchi Online Showdown SCOPENEWYORK competition will be available for purchase. “Showdown,” is a fee-free visual online tournament where Saatchi Online artists can showcase their work and go head-to-head with other artists on the site.

About Saatchi Online

Saatchi Online provides the global art community a new way to discover art and get discovered. Originally conceived by Charles Saatchi, the new Saatchi Online is led by CEO Bruce Livingstone, founder of iStockphoto. Saatchi Online is affiliated with the Saatchi Gallery and Charles Saatchi, who is a majority shareholder in Saatchi Online along with Balderton Capital. Saatchi Online offers artists powerful social networking and “Showdown,” a fee-free visual “head-to-head” competition. The winners of the Showdown competitions receive a cash prize and a spot in the Saatchi Gallery in London or are featured at SCOPE International Art Fairs. Saatchi Online is headquartered in Chinatown in Los Angeles, California.

How Art Museums are Relevant for a New Generation

artnews — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:08:20 +0000

How Art Museums are Striving to Stay Relevant for a New Generation

Sue Bell Yank

Writer, Organizer, and Asst. Dir. of Academic Programs at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Posted: March 28, 2010 found at huffingtonpost.com

As I’ve been perusing my upcoming spring of various arts-related conferences (both academic and professional), a common question emerges again and again throughout these disparate events: how must art institutions change to re-engage current cultural audiences?

Biennial Rising: Prospect.1 New Orleans and the Post-Disaster Arts Movement ~ Sue Bell Yank

The upcoming American Association of Museums (AAM) conference (happening here in Los Angeles in late May) is called “Museums Without Borders” accompanied by some fuzzy language about “connection, community, cultural identity, and the power of the imagination,” but many of the actual session titles betray an overriding preoccupation: how to get new and younger audiences in interface with museums in innovative, user-generated, participatory ways.

The overwhelming consensus (as evidenced by the alarming aging of audiences to traditional arts venues – like museums, the opera, performing arts) is that younger generations of Americans eschew the largely passive role of audience, and demand participation from their art institutions. A recent article by Diane Ragsdale for the Stanford Social Innovation Review analyzes this trend in detail.

Though the preponderance of the AAM sessions seem to be about social media, podcasting, etc under the umbrella of “digital outreach” (one of my favorite titles is Blogging and Tweeting and Facebook Oh My!), a fair number are about programming decisions that are more participatory, interactive, and socially engaged – particularly in the visual arts.

An analysis of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MOCA’s) Engagement Party series will be among the offerings, as well as sessions on art as social action by Peter Sellars, the Hammer Museum’s new Public Engagement residency with artist Mark Allen from Machine Project, and a current project at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) with resident artists Fallen Fruit entitled EATLACMA.

Such programs and the artists involved with this kind of interactive, participatory work will be the main feature of the upcoming Open Engagement Conference as well, an initiative started by Jen Delos Reyes and now operating out of the Social Practice MFA program at Portland State University.

Although artists who work in a socially-engaged, participatory, public and sometimes political realm are nothing new (Allan Kaprow, Yoko Ono, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, John Latham, Lygia Clark, the Guerrilla Girls, and Suzanne Lacy are fine examples of the diversity of such work even back in the 70s), the increasing embrace of what we might call the “social practice” genre by institutions is an unmistakable trend. The difference is, these are not one-off performances, but ongoing programs that change the way visitors (and artists for that matter) think of and interact with museums. Another difference is that the structures to support these practices within the museum are invented, and sometimes exist without the durational and/or physical constraints of traditional presentation. A couple of current and past examples include the aforementioned MOCA Engagement Parties (featuring collectives like the fabulous Lucky Dragons, Slanguage, and KnifeandFork), the LACMA Lab educational/curatorial hybrid, and the Project Series of the Serpentine Gallery in London (featuring a huge list of artists including Ultra-Red, Susan Hefuna, and Hiwa K). Plus more are in the works – as mentioned previously, the Hammer Museum has just launched a year-long Public Engagement Artist Residency (with artist Mark Allen), and the similarly new EATLACMA project (with art collective Fallen Fruit) represents a multivalent and interdisciplinary approach to engagement that will also last for a year.

Yet among many institutions, such practices break some long-held (but largely unspoken) rules of artistic practice – and backtracking on those traditional notions is a difficult process. For example – “artists should not work with non-artists (i.e. people from the “community,” whatever that is) to produce an art project and then show it in the museum.” Or – “art that is widely loved by and accessible to the general public should be treated with suspicion.” Or even structural rules that are far more difficult to break – “artists’ projects must fit within a specific duration.” Now these are obviously generalizations, and museums exist everywhere that have pushed, pulled and bent some of these ideas. But, I still maintain that such ideas remain at the surface of institutional consciousness, and continue to affect current programming as well as how new ideas are approached. As institutions shift their traditional notions of art and audience in response to a changing context, however, the space opens for these kinds of practices to emerge, evolve, and grow – and will allow museums to bring a whole new generation of art-loving Millenials along for the ride.

Read also the following book:

Biennial Rising: Prospect.1 New Orleans and the Post-Disaster Arts Movement ~ Sue Bell Yank