Artnet.com - not just an art auction site

At first glance, Artnet.com seems like one huge art auction site, showing off highest prices paid and advertising galore. But it is a wonderful site for wandering around, finding all sorts of good information about art and artists.

You just have to be committed to clicking with curiosity. For instance, this last time I visited the site, I clicked on "Events" on the top 'links' bar. I was presented with art events from all over the world. From this overwhelming list, I chose The Pervasive View: Vintage Prints from the National Geographic Image Collection, which is Artnet's listing for this photography exhibit. Their page has only one photo, but clicking on the "Gallery Info" tab finds a page of useful information about the gallery - this is not always the case with 'info' pages - and a link to the Gallery webpage.

The Stephen Bulger Gallery, which held this exhibit, is one of those private galleries which actually provide good images from their shows, and plenty of them. One annoying thing is the "This is the property of ..." message which pops up if you click on the picture. It's an appropriate notice of ownership of the image but the little 'ding' sound gets really annoying very quickly.

As for Artnet, I noticed that one of the auctions was for work by Victor Vasarely, whose art I really like. The Artnet page for Vasarely has pictures of "114 artworks for sale" plus thousands of past auction results and a good biography, in addition to all sorts of auction information and links to five exhibitions of his work. More than enough to keep you busy for hours, and that is only one artist.

Then there's the magazine which has lots more stuff as well as Artnet TV which was showing Gilbert & George today (and, incidentally, has an archive going back to 1996). All in all, Artnet is really more than just an auction site, with a wealth of art-related information, and more important, many very good images of art.