Smart art: the best apps for artlovers
The corona pandemic has been shaking up the art market and set a lot in motion; if nothing else, it consequently expedited digitisation. “During the Lockdowns, the reception of art in front of originals had become impossible, art was thrown back to digital presentations in viewing rooms,” writes Dirk Boll, President of Christie's EMEA, in his new book (published in German) entitled Economic Crises and New Art Markets. “Art consumption entered the digital age overnight”.
The enormous surge in digitisation has already changed the market noticeably, and art is increasingly being bought online, especially by young people. Before the Corona crisis, online sales were negligible, and platforms like Instagram were used more as a digital shop window. According to artmarket.com, the estimated value of the art market in 2019 was deemed to have reached USD 64.1 billion, with online sales accounting for roughly 10%. In the first quarter of 2020, the share skyrocketed to 37 per cent. Several exciting new technologies have also contributed to this development, using innovative tools that make the art world more accessible, transparent, and safer. So far, a lack of price transparency and the fear of counterfeiting have kept many people from buying works of art.
The app Magnus, for example, can help with this. Often referred to as the “Shazam of the art world” it provides price data for artworks free of charge. The app’s concept is simple: users take a picture of an artwork with their mobile phone and the Magnus provides the name of the artist, the gallery, the current and previous sales prices, as well as historical data on exhibitions. Based on a vast database, the digital identification technology works similarly to “Shazam” for music.
If you’re more interested in exciting stories and background information rather than prices, try Smartify, which is based on a similar identification technology. In museums and galleries, there is usually only information about the artist, title and year next to the works. If you want to find out more, you have to do your own research. Smartify’s image recognition technology gives users access to texts and audio files for over 2 million artworks - whether you’re in a museum or photographed a picture from a postcard. The database includes the collections of international museums such as the National Gallery in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Met Museum in New York. To guarantee the rights of artists and museums, Smartify explicitly refrains from using user-generated content.
How to ensure the origin and authenticity of an artwork? This question has driven the creators of the app 4ART. The innovative technology is supposed to identify forged works of art in the future. It aims to make the often opaque trade entirely transparent down to the smallest transaction. Therefore, the company creates an unmistakable “digital fingerprint” for every work that has been scanned. As soon as it is then stored in the blockchain-based database, the app can identify it as an original or a fake at any time.
Anyone looking for a digital assistant for the art market jungle is in good hands with Archie’s Nose. Named after Andy Warhol's dachshund Archie, who is said to have had a good nose for masterpieces, the app can be used to organize and discreetly manage your own collection, among other things. The practical “Simulate Artwork” function enables a test hanging of artworks on your walls. Events attended and other art experiences can also be saved in the app like a cultural diary. Archie’s Nose brings together collectors, artists, gallery owners and curators, who can exchange recommendations via the app.
