Do I hear $12 million? I do?
The economics, marketing behind high-priced art
The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art
By Don Thompson
Palgrave Macmillan, 268 pp., illustrated, $24.95
In "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol," the late, platinum-bewigged icon offered his advice on the purchase of outrageously expensive art. "Say you were going to buy a $200,000 painting," he wrote. "I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall." Your visitors, he argued, would have no trouble understanding your implication.
That, in effect, is the foremost of author Don Thompson's answers to his primary question: Exactly how did the contemporary art world become so ludicrously inflated? Or, as his title suggests, who in their right mind pays $12 million for a dead shark encased in formaldehyde?
The answer, of course, is people for whom $12 million is a comparative pittance. Thompson's dry-humored book, as he freely admits, is not so much about the aesthetics of art as it is about "money, lust, and the self-aggrandizement of possession."
Warhol's $200,000 painting, considered in 1975 terms (the year his "Philosophy" was published), today would be mere tisue paper on the heel of Viennese socialite Adele Bloch-Bauer. Her 1907 "Portrait" by Gustav Klimt was, briefly in 2006, the most expensive painting ever purchased, at $135 million.
According to Ron Lauder, the cosmetics-company heir, onetime candidate for New York mayor, and the man who paid for the Klimt painting, there are three categories of art - "Oh," "Oh my," and "Oh, my God." "The $12 Million Stuffed Shark" focuses strictly on the last.
The shark is British artist Damien Hirst's notorious rotting tiger shark, suspended in a glass-and-steel vitrine and freighted with the ponderous title "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living." That mystical christening, the audacity of the concept, and Hirst's original commission from the renowned collector Charles Saatchi all combined to give the work instant status.
That there is a finite and ever-dwindling reserve of Old Masters, impressionist, and modern-art paintings on the market provides one clear reason behind the rise of nontraditional contemporary art, loosely defined by the author as having been created after 1970. More to the point, contemporary collectors respond to "the energy of the art of their own generation, as they respond to its music."
Conceptual artists such as Hirst, Jeff Koons (creator of the life-size ceramic "Michael Jackson and Bubbles," portraying the eccentric pop star with his pet chimp), and, to a lesser extent, Hirst's fellow young British artist Tracey Emin ("My Bed") make up the bulk of the author's anecdotal evidence. Defying his own criteria, he returns repeatedly to case histories involving definitive works by Warhol and the grotesque figurative painter Francis Bacon, who began working in the 1920s.
In patient, sometimes tedious detail, Thompson breaks down the art-world landscape, committing whole chapters to auctions, dealers, collectors, the rise of art fairs, and other structural frameworks. In this way he builds his case for the value-added "branding" of iconic artworks, explaining how a painting's "provenance" - the prestige of its history, be it once owned by Saatchi, sold by Gagosian, hung at the MoMA, or hammered down at Christie's - makes the work desirable.
The percentage of contemporary artists whose work can claim such provenance is, we're told, as insignificant as one drip of paint in a wall-size Jackson Pollock. Modeling his book after Steven D. Levitt's and Stephen J. Dubner's "Freakonomics," the author, a former visiting professor at Harvard now teaching in the MBA program at Toronto's York University, tosses off numbers as if he were creating an action painting. "Two out of five new artists will no longer be showing in a mainstream gallery five years after their first show," he writes. Even if successful, just one of 200 established artists will ever see their work auctioned at
The book picks up pace as Thompson's ideas begin to accumulate. Quite naturally, with such long odds, the artists who do become superstars have to distinguish themselves in maverick ways, through "creativity, innovation, or shock value." Crowds tend to grow in proportion to the purchase price of the works on display. When Lauder bought his bank-breaking Klimt, average attendance at his New York gallery rose from 800 to 6,000 visitors per day. People sure do love to gawk.
The juiciest comment belongs not to the author but to the art critic Jerry Saltz, who pictures the contemporary art world as "a combination slave market, trading floor, disco, theater, and brothel" where the ultra-rich act out a dizzying ritual of conspicuous consumption. There are now more billionaires than ever - more than 1,000 worldwide, according to Forbes. The art world is a particularly exciting way for them to flaunt their wealth. When the dot-com bubble of the 1990s burst, Thompson tells us, analysts fully expected the art market to collapse. Instead, prices moved steadily northward, as big-money investors shifted from the stock market to collecting. Perhaps something similar will happen in this down market.
For the rest of us, Thompson advises, don't bother. Modestly priced contemporary artwork rarely appreciates in value. If you absolutely, positively must, he soberly recommends the $50,000-$100,000 range, and he suggests looking at up-and-comers from Russia, India, and China. Disturbing subject matter is inevitable, as Bacon once noted. Even in a beautiful landscape, he said, "under the leaves the insects are eating each other." Violence, he concluded, is simply a part of life.
For some financial predators, the shark confirms it.
Globe contributor James Sullivan is the author of "Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon." 