I think Van Gogh's squishy ear is the real prize here (easily obtained off
eBay, too)
An eSpree of Art Buying Makes a Believer
By DEBORAH SOLOMON
New York Times
July 30, 2000
ANDRÉ BRETON, who was almost as famous for his French arrogance as for
founding Surrealism, enjoyed playing the role of the anti-snob. He once
said that the most interesting artistic experience in Paris was going to
the flea market.
I thought of Breton the other night while sifting through the riotous
jumble of merchandise offered at eBay, the online auction site. It lists
some 3.7 million items organized into 2,900 categories, one of which is
fine art. To try it out, I typed in the name of Vincent van Gogh. The
search yielded 617 items ranging from a supposed original painting (price:
$1 million) to a mass-produced souvenir of artistic torment: a curvy,
pinkish rubber objet described with typical eBay poetry as "Van Gogh's Ear
-- squish it, squeeze it!"
I placed a bid on the ear. The next morning, an e-mail message arrived:
"Congratulations on winning Van Gogh's ear. The total is $2.75."
Actually, I was at eBay not to accumulate pop-culture artifacts or the
anatomical parts of Dutch masters, but rather to purchase original works of
art. Curious about the growing and radical phenomenon by which people are
buying art they can't see from sellers they can't see, I decided to shop
for art online and assemble my own art collection. My budget: an even
$1,000 (make that $997.25, after the ear).
Naturally, I hoped to find a few sterling works and believed I possessed a
sharp enough eye to pluck some rare and lovely gems from eBay's ocean of
indifferent merchandise. But there was also a real possibility that I could
wind up with a fake. In May, an abstract painting passed off as a Richard
Diebenkorn made headlines after it was purchased on eBay for $135,805.
Although the sale was stopped, it serves as a cautionary tale about the
hazards of buying art on eBay, which, not unlike the classified ads,
enables any Joe with a bogus Grandma Moses to post a listing.
At present there are at least 50 Web sites offering art for sale. Typical,
perhaps, is IncredibleArt.com, where you can type in "landscapes" or
"angels" or "fish" and view an array of sincere efforts by living artists
in the requested category. At the high end of the trade, sites like
Artnet.com are stocked with work by brand-name artists, all of it furnished
by reputable art dealers. It's doubtless very convenient if you live in
Reykjavik or Tirana and suddenly crave a Nan Goldin photograph for the spot
above your couch.
EBay, by contrast, is a virtual flea market, the e-flea, with all the
unevenness of quality that implies. It might seem to represent the end of
the tradition of the collector as connoisseur, but you can also view it as
quite the reverse. In an age when collectors are willing to drop $14
million for a classic Rothko and when $2 million gets you a not-so-great
Pollock, there is something appealing about an auction site that offers
vast availability as well as the chance to buy a work of art for $200 or
even $20. Here, you can comb through tens of thousands of works culled from
the attics and corner junk shops of America -- and respond to the values
embodied in an object rather than to a wall label or a brand name.
Until the day when I clicked onto www.ebay.com, I had never purchased a
work of art. This negative achievement was no doubt related to my
profession: art critics are obligated to carp, not consume. Instead of
putting my money where my mouth was, I put my mouth where other people's
money was. In the 80's, the tax cuts at the heart of Ronald Reagan's voodoo
economics sent art prices soaring, and critics felt predictably miffed as
sky-high records set in the auction rooms of Manhattan brought on an age in
which money seemed to be the sole arbiter of cultural worth.
EBay, too, is an auction room, but of a vigorously plebeian stripe. Works
of art are treated as priced-to-go merchandise, as if they were bowling
balls or Hawaiian shirts. So what was I doing here? When I first clicked
on, there were listings for 37,814 fine-art objects, and I found it
fascinating to browse through them. I liked the openness, the lack of
pretense of a place where a signed Christo photograph, a Malevich
exhibition poster from the Tate Gallery in London and a Raphael Soyer
charcoal sketch appeared in the company of pictures that were variously
described as "Original Impressionist Oil Painting, $5.99," or "Original
Painting Signed Alice $9.99" or "Artist Has Same Astrology Chart as Picasso
$50."
What sort of art do Americans display in their homes? EBay offers an
unofficial survey of everything out there, an impromptu sociology lesson on
American taste. A large percentage of eBay's holdings consists of
reproductions of celebrated works -- for instance, a plaster replica of
Degas's sculpture "The Little Dancer" for
