Artnet v Artinfo: Two art websites enter — one site leaves

Back in the mid–1990s Artnet appeared and for seemingly forever — 10 years in internet time seems a century or more in real life — it's had the web to itself.

Until this year, when Louise MacBain, a French–Canadian woman who with her former husband built up Trader, an international group of 200 classified–ad–based publications, entered the arena.

When she divorced in 2000 her share of the settlement was nearly $500 million.

Since that time she's been buying and dealing and on April 10 of this year she launched Artinfo.

She plans to crush Artnet.

Anthony Haden–Guest, in his column in this past weekend's Financial Times, wrote about the upcoming battle to the virtual death.

His piece follows.

War of Vision on the Web

Artnet, the internet art resource, long seemed a coelacanth, a survivor from the primeval dotcom epoch.

Launched in the mid-1990s, it survived the extinctions and floated through unfashionable cyberspace for eight unprofitable years.

It persevered.

Bill Fine, the president, formerly with Art in America, built up a database, cultivated galleries and set Artnet apart from other web databases by posting a lively online magazine.

This was edited by one New Yorker, Walter Robinson, and carried a no-holds-barred column by another, Charlie Finch (who once described an admired art world figure as "a penis with shoes". They remain friends).

The internet duly began bubbling again and two years ago Artnet moved into the black and into action.

"Artnet is very focused," says Joe La Placa, who runs the London operation. "We have an auction database. And we have a gallery network with 1,100 galleries online. Including 150 London galleries. And top ones. From Jay Jopling on down."

And the older galleries?

"They are all starting to get it. In England we have 250,000 people coming on to broadband every month. The country will be wired up by 2007."

So Artnet has it made.

Right?

No.

Here comes competition.

Hello, Artinfo.



Artinfo is taking on Artnet directly.

Louise MacBain, who is backing it, is a French-Canadian.

She and her former husband built up Trader, an international group of 200 classified ad-based publications.

"I developed 60 internet sites myself over five years," she says.

Her 2000 divorce left her worth £250m and that same year she backed and became chief executive of the auction house De Pury & Luxembourg.

Her relationship with Simone de Pury cooled and she resigned in December 2002.

LTB Holding, her company, went into overdrive.

In 2003 she bought the American magazine, Art and Auction; the following year Somogy, France's leading publisher of art books and catalogues, Museums magazine, America's Gallery Guides and Britain's Modern Painters.

So - into cyberspace.

Artinfo first went online on April 10.

A couple of weeks ago, MacBain announced that James Truman, former editorial director of Condé Nast, had been hired.

"We opened softly just for the news," MacBain said.

"In a few months it's going to be very important."

They have acquired two databases, Art Sales Index and Gordon's, and have data on 3.3m items, going back almost 40 years.

"There will 250,000 artists and their bios," she says.

"We deal with about a thousand museums and galleries. We have access. What we're doing is consolidating what we've already got. And in the internet world, content is king."

Artinfo is to be relaunched in November.

Battle is joined.

Here you might expect to read a round figure for what is at stake.

The truth is I can't even come up with a sensible guess.

But the global art market is super-sizing and the internet is more and more part of it so I'll just say: potentially a lot.

Artnet and Artinfo have very different philosophies, or business models, which here means much the same thing.

Ben Crawford, LTB's president, says that Artinfo will also carry information about museum shows, travel, art schools, job openings.

"We're looking at a much broader group than just people who need art prices for their job or for their private collection," he notes, pointedly.

As well as this, Artinfo plays a strategic part in Louise MacBain's grand designs.

She bought a £12m house in Notting Hill for her Foundation Blouin MacBain (Blouin is her maiden name).

"We are going to be working with the OECD in many countries," she says. "We will have information on our site about art and neurobiology. The foundation is working with Nobel Prize people and other thinkers, philosophers and artists. And that will be done in March. So we will be having a lot of editorial that other people don't have."

The foundation already has projects at Columbia and Harvard.

"What we're doing at Harvard is putting people in contact with different artists. Because the artists know things that they don't know," she says.

She will shortly be endowing a chair at a major British university.

"For me the internet platform is actually beautiful. Because it's infinite! We're going to be offering some services free for the poor people," she says. Free downloads. "The rest will be paying. At the end of the day, the enrichment of the human being, that's what it's all about."

Artnet is more about the art world.

Bill Fine says that since last Autumn, Sotheby's, New York, has been using Artnet sales histories in its catalogues.

"If you wanted to appraise a Damien Hirst, you would find comparable works. If you've ever bought a used car in the United States, there's something called the Blue Book. We're the Blue Book of the art world!"

Joe La Placa notes that, "Artnet is currently putting together a closed network for dealers to trade between each other. An online auction. It'll be sometime next year. This is a revolutionary idea. It's in direct opposition to the auction houses."

Ben Crawford counters: "We have a whole series of products that are in development that will be ready in the months and years to come. There's no end point."

There is sniping.

MacBain's plans to improve the human condition have people at Artnet rolling their eyes.

"The bottom line on all of the sabre-rattling over there is that none of these people are art people!" Bill Fine says.

Artinfo counters that Artnet is a boutique operation that can't promote itself.

"We're in China already," observes Ben Crawford.

Capitalism loves a long-running mano a mano: Coke versus Pepsi, Time versus Newsweek.

But a better comparison between sleek art world-friendly Artnet and ambitious, asset-gobbling Artinfo might be with a different twosome: Apple and Microsoft.

That is, if one can imagine a spiritualised Bill Gates.