art finder

[geerhard Huising]

 

Hello boolean friends

 

Who can help me to find a string to search for certain artwork

f.i. karel appel

For a friend of mine I'd like to find a string that helps him to find artwork for sale of that certain artist.

Thanks and happy easter from Holland

Geerhard

[Dave Galley]

Geerhard,

Perhaps I misunderstand your question, but... this seems like a very easy search!

[karel appel "for sale"] --sans brackets, of course-- on Google turned up a number of galleries / sites that purported to deal in Karel Appel pieces.

To generalize the string -- [+"NAMEARTISTGOESBY" "for sale"] -- sans braces and replacing the name-placeholder with the name you are looking for.

I have a feeling, however, that you must be looking for something else. In that case, could you please clarify the particular difficulty you are having?

-Dave Galley

[geerhard Huising]

 

Hello Dave,

You are completely correct!

There are several things which we don't want to see in the results of the search.

For instance the galleries (prices of the work 'to high'), the musea.

The search is for private owners that offer their work on local advertising boards etc.

Kind regards

Geerhard

 

[Dave Galley]

Geerhard,

Okay, then! Instead, this is an intriguing, challenging project that is a bit beyond my ken.

The problem with open web (typical search engine) search is that it's based on keyword matching, refining results through through explicit inclusion or exclusion. The big engines do a VERY little bit of branching (gallery and galleries may both return on searches for the other term) and concept matching (semantic search), according to their own particular flavors.

To find something on the web, it must be indexed. To be indexed, it has to be published on a site that either promotes indexing or fails to prohibit it. To be returned high on the results it must be very popular (among a variety of other arcane criteria, at least in Google's case), or there must be few other results.

Further adding to the problem (some ads are not indexed, so will not be returned as results), is the fact that by searching to exclude particular keywords -- ex ["karel appel" AND NOT (museum OR gallery)] you will necessarily exclude the private sale ad that says:

 

"I am selling a fabulous piece by Karel Appel. Private direct sale - no mesuem or gallery is involved as intermediary."

 

So, how can you exclude gallery / museum / auction house results without excluding private seller ads who explicitly mention these terms in their pages? This is a real problem, and I do not have a good solution.

The international and multi-lingual nature of the market for works of art complicates things even further. I imagine, as in any market, there are slangs and shorthands, some of which are unique to a given language, country, or culture. Even if most of the business transacted on the WWW is in English, there can be some complications arising from this.

Unfortunately, I  just do not know enough about the particulars of the subject matter in this case to offer useful suggestions. However, I am now curious about this and may do some digging.

Good luck, and I hope that others here can offer some insight!

-Dave Galley