Product Description

Why would a very smart New York investment banker pay twelve million dollars for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock's drip painting No.5 1948 sell for $140 million? And why does a leather jacket with silver chain attached, tossed in a corner and titled 'No One Ever Leaves', bring $690,000 at a 2007 Sotheby's auction? The Twelve Million Dollar Stuffed Shark is the first book to look at the economics of the modern art world and the marketing strategies which power the market to produce such astronomical prices. Don Thompson talks to auction houses, dealers, and collectors to find out the source of Charles Saatchi's Midas touch, and how far a gallery like White Cube has contributed to Damien Hirst becoming the highest-earning artist in the world. He unravels the Byzantine sale procedures by which the top auction houses maintain both premium prices for what they sell and their own pre-eminence, but also shows us a market whose most spectacular excesses are driven just as often by far simpler human urges like lust and self-aggrandizement. It is a world in which brand is all-important, and which in many ways has most in common with the branded world of luxury fashion. The result is a fascinating, shrewd and highly readable insight into a modern-day phenomenon. Don Thompson is an economist and professor of business specialising in art. He has taught at the London School of Economics and the Harvard Business School. This is his first trade book. He lives in London and Toronto.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11769 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Richard Morrison in The Times, January 16th 2008
"If you read no other book about art in your life, read the one that's gripped me like a thriller for the past two days."

The Independent, 28th March 2008
an 'entralling revelation-rich trip through the money game of the art market.'

The Sunday Express, 23rd March 2008
'intriguing and readable'

Customer Reviews

A shark that is not alone swimming in those waters...
Written by an economist who had access to the most important actors (collectors, dealers, auctioneers, curators, art fair directors...)while doing his research, this book is an in-depth study of the way the market for contemporary art functions, the part played by auction houses, dealers, big collectors, museums, the sometimes incestuous relationships that exist between all of them, how art is priced, how auctions are organized (on and off the scene), how gallery shows are sold (or pre-sold), the importance of art-branding in creating an artist's reputation (the brand being the gallery, the auction house, the artist himself, a museum, or even a collector if he is important enough), and, most importantly, how these art brands are created. One insighful conclusion is that the art market, and the market for contemporary art in particular, is as much brand-driven as any other high-end luxury market. Through case studies (the dealers Larry Gagosian or Jay Joplin, the artists Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, Tracey Emin, Jeff Koons, the auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's, the collector Charles Saatchi...)and broader considerations on the overall economics of art, the author manages to write a book which is at the same time well informed (with some spelling approximations, e.g. "Joe Bernardo" for the Portuguese collector Jose Berardo), to the point and easy to read. Of the more than twenty books on the topic available on Amazon's, this one is the best in my opinion (and I've read quite a few...).

Art is all about money
If you are interested in the financial side of art then this is a great book. If you think art is all about money then this book will be an agreeable read. But if you think art is on a higher plain than filthy lucre then you'll be spitting blood with this book.

Art for Money's Sake, Money for Art's Sake
Whilst the art industry traditionally shrouded the artwork behind a transcendental aesthetic fetishism which rendered redundant any notion of use value, the contemporary market has abstracted this onto a purely economic level. Art's value is now not only shorn of any relation to its production or other commodities, but also to those of other artworks.

Thompson provides an insightful investigation into the mechanics of the art market, illuminating the exponential process of increasing sums of money being exchanged for artworks, setting new sales records on a regular basis over recent years. To explore this phenomenon the book reflects on the relationship between artists, galleries, auction houses and collectors, focusing on recent transactions, and some of the major players and artworks involved, with a particular emphasis on the central role of the major auction houses, Sotheby's and Christies, in setting standards of financial value for artworks.

The importance of the book lies in the fact that it reveals that contemporary art production and consumption have little to do with promoting reflective or challenging ideas through the work itself, or has any basis in qualitative values held by either the public, or the industry itself. It is is shame then, that at points in the text, Thompson derides the work of various YBA artists as being substantially of less value than works from earlier historical periods. Asserting subjective judgements of this kind contradicts the journalistic neutrality the book generally projects, and adds nothing to the information it presents.

Perhaps the book could have benefited by relating the art market to the parallel recent developments in investment finance and consumerism to reveal wider social trends taking place, and the interrelated notions of growth, risk management and conspicuous consumption, that fuel and regulate contemporary global economies. But overall it is an informative enough view of the interdependent relationships between aesthetics, investment and consumption within a traditionally discreet commodity based industry.

Interestingly since the books publication the art market has yet again evolved to another level. Damien Hirst's Sept 2008 Sotheby's auction 'Beautiful Inside My Head Forever', recomposed the balance between artist, gallery and auction house into a new alignment, suggesting a new future economic paradigm for the high end players in the market, and perhaps even a starting point for a second volume!