LINKS: Monitoring tastes

• NEW YORK. Art sales go virtual as big names back launch of exclusive site Art.sy. The site will monitor collectors' needs and tastes with the help of its "art genome technology" based on the technology of "custom music-curating site Pandora."
• NEW YORK. Collectors continue to embrace lighthearted art as Lichtenstein, Warhol, Koons and Calder top Christie's post-war/ contemporary evening sale... while bidders at Sotheby's were "buzzed with Coca Cola and ice cream"... and Phillips de Pury's stellar $137 million debut was largely thanks to a 1962 Warhol.
• According to The Art Newspaper, this means we are experiencing times of "economic optimism."
• LONDON. Meanwhile, the other main trend, traditional Chinese art, is hotter than ever as a Qianlong fish vase fetched $85 million, "a world record for any work of Chinese art at auction." The trend is largely in response to a growing contingent of Chinese buyers (there are now 128 billionaires in China) who are making nationalistic purchases of art and antiquities. The buyer of the Qianlong fish vase was no exception.