Online Art Galleries

Well-known British advertiser and art collector Charles Saatchi last year launched Stuart and Your Gallery online projects, which has reached 3.5 million visitors daily.  Definitely, this is the largest audience in current online art projects.

Your Gallery is a YouTube like service where users can show, share and vote on pieces of art.  Over 20,000 artists with different styles and, let’s say, many levels of quality have uploaded their works, paintings, drawings, photographs and even video (surprisingly, video is the least represented technique, less than 10% of the works) can be browsed by the artist names. Every piece has a profile with a brief biography of the artist, a resumé, a statement of the work and artist’s contact (just for subscribed users, like in the popular movie directory IMBD). The audience is primarily from the States, followed by United Kingdom and German. Saatchy Gallery is now preparing a mandarin version of the site, of course, to address the service to the Chinese art market, with its emerging artist and collectors.

Even though there are no specific requirements to upload works and take part of the database, Saatchi also hosts an art student service. The main difference between both “galleries” is that Stuart adds features of social network. Students’ profile look more like MySpace. When registered, besides showing their skills, users can also add artie friends to their network and chatting with other connected users. 

Contributed by Cristina Diaz

Related PSFK article: Student Art in China