Application: Artsty and The Art Genome Project

Given my own interest in the digital and the archival, I thought for my application I’d look at a system of classification in digital form. Having discussed archival aesthetics last week, I followed that thread and took a look at Artsy through the lens of this week’s introduction to our Libraries portion of the course and more specifically classification.

Artsy’s Founder and CEO, Carter Cleveland, describes the site as follows:

Artsy’s mission is to make all the world’s art accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. We are an online platform for discovering and collecting art. Our growing collection comprises 50,000+ artworks by 11,000+ artists from leading galleries, museums, foundations, and artists’ estates. Artsy provides one of the largest collections of contemporary art available online.

Powered by The Art Genome Project—a way of providing pathways for discovery for experts and non-experts alike—Artsy hopes to foster new generations of art lovers, museum-goers, collectors, and patrons. We are honored to partner with 500+ leading galleries, as well as 100+ museums and foundations.

So if there’a a Hollywood pitch for what Artsy is, it’s simplest incarnation might read something like “Amazon and Netflix for art.” I can hear the art world groaning loud and clear.

The accessibility that Cleveland states as central to the mission of Artsy is in line with what Anthony Panizzi and Charles Cutter had in mind with their classification systems for libraries. In the Wright reading, he says that Panizzi’s system and its subject headings “marked a major philosophical step toward opening up the catalog to a broader audience.” In Panizzi’s own words from a text I wish I could cite quoted by Wright:

I want the poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity… if following his rational pursuits, of consulting the same authorities, of fathoming the most intricate inquiry as the richest man in the kingdom.”

Granted, Artsy is not just a means for discovery of art but also for the collecting of art. There are works on the site which sell for less than $1,000 but the art market remains one that many are not privy to. Artsy can connect users with galleries to discuss sales but I wonder how often that really happens. Let’s say a regular Joe or Jane has the money to buy a piece on Artsy and contacts a gallery to do so. Does the gallery follow through on that sale? Does the sale going to someone that found the work by way of a third party online service diminish the brand of the gallery in any way? On the other side of that coin, how much of the sale of art to the rich is purely about the transaction at hand and not the pomp and circumstance of being a person in the privileged position of being able to afford being a collector? I betray my own lack of knowledge of the art market here but I imagine someone with money wanting to go to a gallery and be courted, wined and dined a bit, before making a purchase.

Back to the core of this week though, classification. Artsy follows the lead of Pandora’s Music Genome Project with its own Art Genome Project. The characteristics that can be applied to an artist or a work of art are considered “genes.” The combined characteristics of a work or artist form a distinct “genome.” Genes, unlike the ubiquitous tag, have an inherent scale. The level to which a quality exists within a work or an artist’s body of work is measured from 0 to 100. From a post on the Art Genome Project’s blog in May of 2012 comes a list of possible genes:

• Time Period (Pre-Impressionism, Modern, Contemporary)
• Medium (Painting, Sculpture, Installation, Video)
• Style or Movement (Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism, Young British Artists)
• Contemporary Tendencies (Tendencies occurring in contemporary art but that people might not yet be comfortable calling “movements,” such as Contemporary Gothic or DIY)
• Concepts (Color Theory, Institutional Critique, Related to Film)
• Content (Portrait, Landscape, The Studio, Cityscape)
• Techniques (Monochrome Painting, Multiple Exposure, Sfumato)
• Geographical Regions (Where an artist has lived and worked)
• Appearance Genes (The look and feel of an object)
• Labs (Genes in development; not public)

At the time of that writing there were 400 genes. Acording to an article in Domus from this past March, that number has more than tripled the project’s director says there are only “over 500.” There are apparently many genes not yet available for public knowledge so some of Artsy’s sauce remains secret. I wonder how those anonymous genes figure into the genomes of works and artists.

Artsy perhaps has some of the same problems with the power of the classifier mentioned regarding the classification systems we’ve looked at in our reading this week. Genes are derived from art history scholars, writing on art in its various forms, internally by the multidisciplinary team at Artsy, and the stakeholders and partners who have allowed works to be featured on the site. There is a way for users to post and write about works on the site but this is not user classification. The order enforced but Artsy and the institutional knowledge it is backed by are the heart of the site and what it does.

I’m wondering what you all think about what Artsy is aiming for. If Google is trying to “organize the world’s information” then Artsy is trying to organize the history of art for easier discovery and, let’s not forget, sale. What do you think about these two distinct capacities of Artsy? Can online art sales really ever be a successful enterprise? How do you feel about the way they arrive at genes and genomes for works and artists?