RUSS NOTO/COURTESY UGALLERY.
Exit
would lose its revenue.
The sweet spot on this pricing
scale then is in the middle: price
points that are payable by credit
card, but still yield a healthy commission. Wiest is arguably Amazon’s dream shopper. Her most
expensive UGallery purchase — a
psychedelic painting of sheep,
by artist Russ Noto — cost her
$4,000. For three months, she says,
she “kept coming back, and waiting
until I had enough money to pay for
it.” She expects she’ll keep it forever, or if for some strange reason she
needs to sell it, “I wouldn’t expect
to make much back.”
That buying philosophy, so antithetical to the rules of cloistered
art dealing, is standard on the
outside. As a whole, UGallery customers don’t purchase with valuation in mind. Within a few days
of its launch, one of the site’s most
popular artists wasn’t an up-andcomer generating buzz; he’s Robert
Hofherr, a director at a Baltimore
advertising firm. According to
UGallery cofounder Stephen Tanenbaum, the amount of works sold
by the gallery’s cast of low-profile
artists, like Hofherr, has increased
by double digits each year since the
site’s launch in 2009.
Tanenbaum says he can’t see a
CULTURE
HUFFINGTON
08.25.13
Collector
Maya Wiest
recently
purchased
Russ Noto’s
Process
Grouping 1.1
from Amazon
Art for
$4,000.
Cowen points out that
art valuation is temperamental.
Simply appearing on
Amazon could theoretically
devalue a work.”
downside to posting stock on Amazon