Palgrave Macmillan The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art

Un incontournable pour mieux comprendre le milieu de l’art, le marché de l’art et l’art actuel. Il aborde des notions qui ne sont pas comprises par le commun des mortels. Très intéressant, il permet de s’interroger sur l’argent dans l’art.

Puppy has been the gatekeeper of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao since its inauguration in 1997. It has been there for the past 25 years and was not taken to the Rockefeller Center in NY. A “brother” or a copy of Puppy was exhibited there. No crap about terrorist threats. This makes one wonder about the rest of the facts contained in the book. Furthermore, the ideas contained become very repetitive and the two handfuls of characters reappear again and again. As for the format of the book, the letter is so tiny, it makes me doubt of the effort of reading it.

Muy buen libro, te da un explicación muy clara del fenómeno del arte contemporáneo con relación a la especulación.

Only recently, Tracey Emin's installation "My Bed" was sold at auction for £2.5 million.This book explains such phenomena. It was written for people who read about multi-million dollar prices for contemporary artworks and wonder how such eye-watering figures are reached. Most of the art discussed in the book is conceptual, but then a lot of contemporary art is conceptual.It looks at artists like On Kawara, whose pictures of dates - literally pictures of dates - sell for up to £300,000 each.Or Felix Gonzales-Torres, whose sculpture "(Untitled) Lover Boys" made of 355 lbs of individual wrapped blue and white candies, sold for $456,000.Gonzales-Torres also did another sculpture of a pile of 10,000 fortune cookies. This did not reach its reserve price at auction, but the bidding went up to $520,000. In both instances of course there were ideas behind these works. They weren't just cookies or just sweeties. But for some of us the accusation that the emperor is not wearing any clothes cannot help but float to mind.The author is an economist who has taught marketing at both Harvard Business School and the London School of Economics. He obviously enjoys contemporary art, both as a collector and an observer, and he casts a wide net. He looks at artists, dealers, auction houses and art fairs, and he follows the funnel that sucks in newbie artists at the top, and pops the lucky ones, (the very lucky ones), out at the bottom, as huge iconic branded figures like Damian Hirst, Jeff Koons, Andreas Gursky or David Hockney. We follow the artists' journey - which is mostly one of patronage, from when they leave art school to when they reach the big time, and each step of the way is analysed.Points of interest I noted from the book....1) I realised how woefully ignorant I was when it comes to contemporary art. The book mentioned many successful artists with whom I was unfamiliar, and it was good to google their work, and get an idea of what they were doing.2) It really alerted me to the power of branding, of making oneself into a megga celebrity whose casual signature - let alone artworks - would be treasured for posterity.3) It gave me a taste of how the super rich wheel and deal. I'm a pore pore woman from sleepy middle England, and I found this eye-opening stuff. These multi-millionaires can be surprisingly insecure though, often relying on the taste of their dealers to tell them what they need to buy. Sometimes they even buy blind, without actually seeing the artwork.4) Snobbery and status. This would seem to be the underlying impulse for a lot of people buying expensive art. To be seen to have a Damian Hirst on one's wall is big time kudos. Think of owning a Gucci handbag, but bigger, brighter, bolder and sexier.I have done little to describe the full compass of this book - it really is wonderfully researched and detailed, whilst still being hugely fun and readable. Its ultimate message ? Buy the art you like, and enjoy it. The likelihood of it being a good investment is small. Even Charles Saatchi falls over on a regular basis. Just go for things that give you pleasure.Absolutely fascinating and highly recommended.---------------------------------------------------------In tandem with reading this book, I listened again to Grayson Perry's fantastic series of Reith Lectures on contemporary art. If Thompson explains the backstage mechanics of today's art market, then Perry explains the heart, creativity and excitement of modern art and artists. Both compliment one another beautifully.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtehJ3...

Aesthetics as a set of principles and branch of philosophy, deals with questions concerning beauty and artistic experiences. As far as our general understanding of it is concerned it is a highly nebulous field, subjected to tremendous degree of misinterpretation; particularly in the field of abstract, modern or conceptual art. In any field of humanities where the field is less accurately known, and its principles have not been precisely formulated, the more authoritarian the field becomes, where its rules are easily manipulated by those who can. In the field of visual arts, with no exact fundamentals precisely developed, the techniques and approaches are wide open for the artists to imagine, explore in creating their art.What I was trained to do as an artist when I was in art school myself and what I learned through experience and independent studies in polishing my skills and artistic expressions by which to communicate my aesthetic concepts in producing my art, were two entirely different fields. Art being the highest form of communication, its goal is to create effects along the spectrum of beauty and ugliness of life for the greater good, and in every instance, it communicates a message; a message emanating through the power of the artist's imagination appealing to our intellect and emotions.As the true nature of an artist continually inspires him to operate in the future and seek changes and improvements in the current state of existence, his art is to soothe our mind and transcend us from our agonies into a culture where it gives Man a splendor of peace and joy to rise to. This is in total contradiction to the "Shock and Awe" concept demonstrated in some of the conceptual arts we observe in the world at the expense of good and effective visual communication.Thus, treating art as a commodity, artificially branding it and manipulating its market with high level of speculation for nothing other than personal gains and social status - as Don Thompson presents in his "$12 Million Stuffed Shark" is a "kidnaping" of art from its true field into a manipulated commodity territory where its true purpose is badly corrupted at the expense of the aesthetics field and the culture, which it is intrinsically designed to improve by raising its consciousness."The $12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark" is unlike any other book about the art market. It is in essence a well researched, unbiased and documented text book. I was attracted to read it mainly due to the credentials of the author, Don Thompson, believing that it will be a very refreshingly worthwhile book to read and I was not disappointed, but rather quite impressed by its boldness and the candor by which it reveals the "insiders" trading rules of the art market that are openly veiled from the "outsiders." It is quite revealing, insightful, entertaining and richly filled with fascinating true incidents that arms the reader, the artist, the art student or the art admirer to make any discussion about art an awe-inspiring and engaging event.This is a book that should be read and understood by every artist - young and old - as a main curriculum, to richly complement his understanding of himself, his art and his career as an artist to discover some of the unknown and existing rules of the "Game" that he is playing and its effect upon himself without knowing it. The book should - when correctly understood and evaluated, bring about a realization of true self-worth and acknowledgment for the artist and renewal of faith and hope, that "good art" can still reign supreme - a postulate, a self-determined and self-created truth that one IS empowered, by the magic of his own awareness and imagination, create for himself and within his sphere of influence.