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W.W. Norton
November 2008
On Sale: November 3, 2008
256 pages
ISBN: 039306722X
EAN: 9780393067224
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A fly-on-the-wall account of the smart and strange
subcultures that make, trade, curate, collect, and hype
contemporary art. The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is
surging. More people than ever call themselves artists.
Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury
good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of
alternative religion. In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton
investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the
workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the
Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine,
the competition behind an important art prize, life in a
notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the
Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of
creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for
meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the
institutions that have the power to shape art history,
based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players,
Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you
look at contemporary culture.
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