Affordable works by Wade Guyton, Richard Prince and Christopher Wool are among the 23 lots being offered in Sotheby’s first online-only auction this week. The sale has been organised in collaboration with Artsy, a technology start-up founded in 2009 and backed by investors including the US dealer Larry Gagosian and the Russian collector Dasha Zhukova. The works are on view at Fused Space gallery in San Francisco until 30 October, when bidding ends.
Most lots have been valued at less than $50,000 and there’s a focus on emerging and established artists who either use or depict technology in their work. The sale—the first by a major auction house on Artsy—is expected to fetch at least $493,000. Sebastian Cwilich, the president and chief operating officer of Artsy, described the collaboration with Sotheby’s as a “natural extension of our platform”.
Following the launch in April of Sotheby’s partnership with the online retail giant eBay, the auction house reported a nearly 55% increase in online bidders in the first half of 2015. Sotheby’s has traditionally lagged behind its main rival Christie’s when it comes to online sales. Christie’s invested $50m to develop online platforms under its former chief executive Steven Murphy and has been offering online-only auctions since 2012.
“Sotheby’s goal is to be relevant to our clients every single day,” says David Goodman, head of digital development and marketing at Sotheby’s. “We have a series of approaches to offer clients new ways to collect including having online bidding in all auctions worldwide since 2010, which has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of bids.”
