Saatchi Online, a platform launched by the famed London gallery in 2006, is getting into the advice business: It is offering would-be collectors a free downloadable e-book entitled “How to Collect Emerging Art in 7 Easy Steps,” penned by Rebecca Wilson, a director of the gallery and curator of the online platform. As one might expect from any endeavor connected with savvy collector Charles Saatchi, the brief, 24-page primer offers tips on how to collect work by relative unknowns. The specifics range from the helpful and insightful to the inane and obvious, with thinly veiled (if unintentionally humorous) plugs for the site’s featured artists.
The text describes Saatchi Online as “a place for first-time buyers and serious collectors alike…[that] makes it easy for anyone to purchase art,” adding the following offer: “we’ll deliver it directly from the artist to you, anywhere in the world.” In fact, the famed art site spun off as a separate enterprise back in 2010, funded by venture capital. It is now based in Los Angeles, not London, and has been offering sales for the past 18 months. That makes Saatchi Online just one of several large websites making a play in the art e-commerce realm, along with Artsy, Paddle8, and — the latest major contender to enter the game — retailing behemoth Amazon.
Wilson, who says that over 5,000 collectors have already downloaded the e-book, told ARTINFO that Saatchi Online is different from other art sales websites because it brokers connections between artists and collectors, so that people can buy directly from artists, straight from their studios. Saatchi Online takes 30 percent commission, and artists get 70 percent. Collectors pay for shipping, as is standard practice in the art world. Insurance is covered by Saatchi Online.
In contrast, she says, other sites “are mirroring what already exists in the real world — they act as brokers between collectors with big budgets and blue chip galleries.” Wilson also leads an art advisory program, affording collectors the opportunity to work with a curator and get advice and proposals about works to buy. There is no charge for the service, but the collector must have a minimum budget of $2,500.
As for that e-book, it starts out by giving a brief history of art collecting through the ages and assures buyers off the bat, “you don’t have to be a Rockefeller to buy art.” It offers examples of collectors on opposite ends of the spectrum: the Medici family (“huge patrons of the arts during the Renaissance”) on the one hand, and the low-key — albeit now-legendary — New York collectors Herbert and Dorothy Vogel, a postal clerk and a librarian respectively, on the other. “This kind of passion — even obsession — is not unusual in the art world,” according to the book. “Charles Saatchi, whose mission to support emerging artists carries on today through Saatchi Online, has been visiting galleries, artists’ studios and out-of-the-way warehouses every week for the last 30 years and his curiosity in young, emerging artists has not dwindled.”
Unlike most other sources offering tips about art collecting, the guide doesn’t shy away from the potential monetary rewards. The final chapter, “Art as an Investment,” advises the reader to “buy what you love,” but adds, “If the investment side of buying art is an area that you want to consider then buying works by emerging artists is probably the best place to start.” It goes on to plug several award-winning Saatchi Online artists as good bets.
Noting that Saatchi was among the earliest buyers of work by now multi-million dollar artist Peter Doig, Wilson writes, “it's an exciting thought to imagine that the work you are buying could be by a future art star — even the next Peter Doig — and that you got their [sic] first.”
