Amazon seems to targeting the wrong category of the art market. I can see people buying works for $50-$2,000. But the idea of someone paying 1.5 mil for a Monet on Amazon is both ridiculous and unlikely.
The very expensive items are just establishing the legitimacy of this 'fine art' section. Amazon doesn't need those items to sell. Having them listed alone makes the art section feel like it is fine, and makes people more comfortable purchasing a thousand dollar item.
I think this opportunity combines basic access/awareness and the fact that there are more people out there with money to burn than some of us think. On top of that, simply getting a product in front of so many new (and unlikely) eyeballs has to have some value.
On the first point and in my experience, the majority of traditional galleries rarely list prices for art. That leaves no chance to be surprised at accessibility ("Who would've thought that Dali lithograph would be $2k? That's worth it just to say I have a Dali on my wall.") or to start saving towards a defined goal ("$6,000. And I love it. If I get that end of financial year bonus..."). How many people would just think "If I have to ask, I can't afford it" and walk away.
A piece or something similar might be cheaper in a specific gallery, but it's quite possible that a newcomer would have little idea about that. Or no way of easily telling if the gallery itself was listing POA.
On the second point, someone recently offered a $1m+ tour package that travelled to every UNESCO world heritage site (hundreds of them), across a span of 1-2 years. They found a buyer.
There is a growing interest in wine from an inexperienced Chinese market with money to spend and I could see there being a similar market for Western art presented accessibly too.
This is what it seems like to our generation (I'm guessing you're 25+). By the time current 12 year olds are old enough to buy art, buying it online will seem totally normal.
~2006 I tried to create an online art marketplace (this was a direct-from-artist marketplace from $50 to $50,000) and one of the main problems was that buying online made the work feel a bit cheaper. That's a stigma that will die off.
All you need to sell work remotely is trusting the brand you're buying through (Amazon) and being familiar with the artist you're buying.
I don't necessarily think buying art online won't work. But Amazon isn't exactly an "upper-class" website, for lack of a better term. It's too commercialized and focuses too much on essential and low cost items.
A bricks-and-mortar comparison might be Target and a higher-end store like Lord & Taylor or Nordstrom's. Amazon is more like Target - it has a decent brand, but you wouldn't really expect to find thousand dollar paintings there. You could, perhaps, expect to find such paintings at a "higher end" store, though.
But, I could be wrong. I just don't think the people spending millions on paintings are the people cruising Amazon for a deal. The online marketplace for exclusive artworks is a different site IMO.
Amazon carries a surprising amount of expensive merchandise already. I've never seen, e.g., luxury watches at Target: http://www.amazon.com/IWC-IW356502-Portofino-Automatic-Black... — and notice that the only reviewer opted to buy the piece at Amazon (Prime eligible!) rather than a brick-and-mortar boutique.
I think that having the expensive stuff at the announcement is all about getting people talking about it. Lots of stores have that ridiculously priced item that everyone wants to see but nobody actually wants to buy.
It does seem to be gallery prices for the commodity art at the low end. But these are just the people that were first in. If we get that race to the bottom among artists, we might see some good stuff for a good price.
Makes it easy for someone to find a Monet for sale, and easy for someone to offer one (simple & cheap to list). I was stunned right off the bat that I could buy genuine Dali works for $5000 - maybe overpriced, but makes it easy to buy if I've got the cash and the stock market is tanking. Making it easy to move easy money (if such money is easy for you) is profitable for Amazon.
eBay has a lot of listings priced over 6 digits.
Both are positioning themselves as the go-to site for buying anything, recognizing that entries in a web-searchable database costs next to nothing regardless of how many digits in the offered price tag.
Amazon isn't really targetting the high end. It's just that people are only looking at those pieces. Even in the painting section, only 25% of the paintings are over $5k, and half are under $2.5k.
One indication that buyers may be ok with this is that art buying (bidding, really) has been done over the phone in the past.
Also, try to realize what this means for Asian bidders who may not have the time (or inclination) to fly over to the West to purchase a work. Or vice-versa.
