Bye bye art appraisers, hello art experts!
Limna relies on a sophisticated algorithm and new databases to enlighten collectors.
The new smartphone application called Limna should delight collectors and a little less gallery owners. Even though the service works for all artists, past or present, the designers of the app agree that it is more appropriate for contemporary artists. It indicates, in fact, the current value of a painting or a photograph and provides information on the reputation of an artist.
Limna is not a classic auction database, as there are many on the market. It is an artificial intelligence calculator whose algorithm is based on economic data weighted by reputational data. The economic data are the usual auction records (provided by Artnet) supplemented - this is its singularity - by catalog prices regularly provided by several galleries around the world, for a total of 2.3 million prices. Reputation data is linked to the places where the artists are exhibited. This reputational part is well known to readers of the Journal des Arts, since it is the one that founds our annual Artindex ranking of artists. Limna was designed and developed by the founders of Artfacts, the database of 700,000 artists and millions of exhibitions.
Concretely, Limna indicates either the average price of a work of one meter by one meter, or the average price for a work of a given format. Why the format? Because Limna researchers claim that the size of a work (for a given artist) is an important parameter of its value. The founders maintain that 80% of the prices indicated correspond to those charged by the galleries. Regarding reputation data, Limna publishes a diagram that measures the artist's reputation, his international and fairs presence, the length of his career and his dynamics, summarizing everything in a simplified formula.
For Gérard Garouste, for example, this gives [translated into French by us because the site is in English]:“A well-known artist, in the middle of his career, with a presence especially in France. » It benefits from a positive dynamic (+ 4%) and the price for a work of 1 x 1 meter is 73,000 euros. The display is very fast, the use is simple, the presentation clear and attractive with many photos of works.
The data can still be improved, the prices of the sculptures and installations have not yet been provided and the data of the editions (excluding photographs) are not very precise, but the start-up has raised enough money from several investors to allow it to continue to refine its algorithm, even though the application is free. She also gives herself time to find a long-term business model. Consolation for the galleries, they are referenced in the app and users can, with a click, contact those representing the artist.
Seen in "Le Journal des arts" article Jean-Christophe Castelain