December 2006 Page 17

> WEB CHANGES ART WORLD

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Collector Charles Saatchi has launched a Web site for art students and a handful have already sold works online as the Internet begins to change the way the art world works.

With prices for contemporary art soaring, collectors say they have less time to travel to galleries and shows to see new works for themselves, while aspiring painters and sculptors find it hard to get noticed amid the pressure to find the next hot young stars.

For many, the Internet is the answer, offering low-cost access for thousands of painters, sculptors and buyers and, at the same time, providing a Myspace-style social networking site for artists the world over.

Saatchi, one of art's most powerful figures who helped establish such stars as Damien Hirst, has attracted more than 2,000 art students to his new Web site, a follow-up to an earlier venture for artists that boasts 20,000 contributors.

"There is something thrilling about seeing the work of young artists for the first time even before their school shows," the reclusive collector said in a statement.

The site called "STUART" (standing for "student art") is a link from his main gallery address (www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk). Saatchi has promised not to buy any art from the site for at least a year to try to make the site more independent.

For some student artists scraping a living from their work, STUART is a way of being noticed and making money.

"I am on the site because I want to sell my work," said Ben Young, a 33-year-old at the Central Saint Martins College in London. "And, obviously, you hope Charles Saatchi is watching and will magically pick up the phone and buy all your work."

While the reality for Young has been less sensational, he sold a painting within two weeks of posting his personal details and art work on the site.

"I've had my own Web site for about 18 months and hadn't sold anything through that," he said, adding that he then tried STUART after reading about it in a newspaper.

"It worked out great for me. I was on there for less than two weeks and was contacted by (collector) Bernard Jacobson and sold him a piece. It was the quickest business in my life."

Young also said he would use STUART to contact other artists who may be interested in working with him on an exhibition.

Jacobson bought the painting without having seen the real thing, only an image of it on the site.

"It's not normal for me," he told Reuters. "As I've got busier I just don't have time to go around the art schools, which I do much less than I used to.

"I thought this was a very good way of doing that."

Olivier Varenne, art adviser for an Australian museum, said he often used the Internet for research, but would not buy a work without seeing it first hand.

"I'm not very keen on buying art online, but I am using the Web for research," he explained.

"It's a great tool to look at artists and a great tool to discover new artists. But when you want to buy a piece you want to see it in the flesh."

Based on what he saw on STUART, Varenne contacted an artist while on a trip to New York and bought four works from him.

The Saatchi gallery said that interest in STUART has been so high that its Web site crashed this week after attracting more than six million hits in one day.

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