by Don Thompson
from Palgrave Macmillan
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Editorial ReviewWhy would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock's drip painting No. 5, 1948 sell for $140 million? Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored. This book is the first to look at the economics and the marketing strategies that enable the modern art market to generate such astronomical prices. Drawing on interviews with both past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a journey of discovery through the peculiar world of modern art. Surprising, passionate, gossipy, revelatory, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark reveals a great deal that even experienced auction purchasers do not know.
Customer Reviews:
- Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
- fine art world book
Fantastic look at the financial and social structures of the fine art world. A must for those entering this field! And for those who don't get why some things fly as art.
- A must have book about art
By far the most informative book written about the crazy art world. I've told all of your art friends to buy a copy.
Roanoke, Va
- It's all about the "brand"
When someone about to sell an art collection gets the two rival auction houses to play "rock, scissors, paper" and awards the $20 million sale to the winner; when the estimated value of a work by a contemporary artist is calculated to be the equivalent of what a collector would have needed to pay to purchase four Impressionist works (two Monets, a Pissaro and a Cezanne), then how, on earth, is anyone supposed to make sense of the art market?
Don Thompson has a one word answer: Branding. In his... more info
- A very limited view
I can't rate this book as highly as the other reviewers.
There are parts of the book that are very good and flesh out the startling numbers we hear from auctions and sales of contemporary art. The author is an economist and he sets out to understand both the both the economics and marketing of art today. He looks at art as a commodity which it is to the people he quotes and interviews. His statement,"The art trade is the least transparent and least regulated major commercial activity in the world."... more info
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