Click for 2003 artprice auction record CD-ROM review

Click for 2003 artprice auction record book review

Posted September 4, 2002

Artprice.com, a major international art auction price database and publisher of art auction price results, has released Fine Art CD-ROM, January 1987/March 2002. The two CD-ROM set contains fifteen years of art auction prices comprising 2,900,000 individual sales results for paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, miniatures, tapestries, prints, posters, and photographs by 270,000 artists sold by hundreds of international auction houses at thousands of auctions held between January 1987 and March 2002. One CD installs the product; the other CD is used for price research. Artbusiness.com's initial tests of the 2002 Artprice.com CD-ROM set find it to be easy to install (on a Mac), fast, comprehensive, easy to use, and generally superior to the 2001 edition.

Art price data can be accessed in a variety of ways including by artist, medium, title of the art, date of sale, location of sale, and auction house. Searches can also be made using multiple parameters in order to limit the number of matches, or track the auction histories of single works of art. Other more advanced search features include capabilities for searches by single words in a work of art's title or by any consecutive combination of letters within an artist's name (an Artbusiness.com favorite). These last two searches sometimes take a while to complete, but they come in extremely handy when you can only partially identify an artist's name, have to research specific subject matters, or have incomplete information about a work of art's title.

Additional features make analyzing an artist's auction history and price structure easier than ever. Once located, all auction records for any individual artist can be displayed, either high to low or low to high, by date of sale, sale price, dimensions of the art, or dates that the art was created. These options save researchers the time involved in scrolling through dozens, hundreds, or thousands of price results in order to assess market trends, size/price data, how subject matter impacts selling price, and so on.

The Artprice.com online database, constantly updated with the latest auction records, is accessible from any Artprice.com CD-ROM. Suppose, for example, that a researcher wants to see whether art by a particular artist has sold between the CD-ROM's cut-off date of March 2002 and the current date. He simply accesses the artist's price results on the CD-ROM, goes online, and then clicks directly from the CD-ROM results page to the corresponding Artprice.com online results page. The artist's sales results appear chronologically beginning with the most recent sale and are catalogued by sale date, title, size, and medium. Price results and sale locations of any or all online entries are available by paying a fee directly to Artprice.com.

Artprice.com has also improved the little device, called a "protection key," that comes with all CD-ROM's and must be connected to a computer in order for the CD-ROM to work properly. The purpose of the key is to prevent multiple users from sharing a single CD-ROM on multiple computers. The key is now much easier to move from computer to computer so that an art appraiser with a laptop and a desktop, for example, can install and use the CD-ROM's on both machines with little inconvenience.

Overall, the 2002 Artprice.com CD-ROM set is a great product. It's easy to install, easy to use, and Artbusiness.com highly recommends it for anyone who needs current art price information on a regular basis. A small percentage of users may experience installation problems. Peter Hastings Falk, North American distributor for the Artprice.com CD-ROM set, assures purchasers that technical assistance is available for anyone with either installation or operational problems at 1.800.278.4274

Fine Art, January 1987/March 2002, 2 CD-ROM set. Artprice.com, St.-Romain-au-Mont-d'Or, France, 2002. $449. Annual update is $145 (with proof of purchase of previous year's CD).

Available in North America from the Sound View Press Books. Sound View Press is located at 859 Boston Post Road, Madison, CT 06443 or call 1.800.278.4274. Internationally, order directly from the Artprice.com website.

For those of you who prefer your art price results as hard copy, Artprice.com also publishes art prices in an annual auction record compendium in book form. The 2002 edition of Art Price Annual & Falk's ART PRICE INDEX contains 170,000 individual price results for works of art by 59,000 artists that sold at 5,200 international auctions during 2001. Coverage includes paintings, drawings, prints, watercolors, miniatures, sculptures, and photographs.

Art Price Annual & Falk's Art Price Index, 2002 by Artprice.com. Artprice.com, St.-Romain-au-Mt. d'Or, France, 2002, hardbound, 2,794 pages, 8 7/8 by 11 5/8 inches, $119.