Seven Days In The Art World - Softcover

Thornton, Sara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847080847 ISBN 13: 9781847080844

Publisher: Granta Books, 2009

Synopsis

From London to Beijing to New York, art sales are booming, and the art world receives the sort of breathless media attention once reserved for celebrities and royals. In "Seven Days in the Art World", Sarah Thornton, a brilliant young sociologist, looks at all aspects of buying, selling, and creating serious art. Thornton has exceptional access, and brings a keen critical eye to her coverage of this glamorous milieu, offering the first authoritative account of what is now a multi-billion dollar global marketplace-cum-playground for an ever-expanding number of collectors, investors, and enthusiasts.

About this title

About the Author:

SARAH THORNTON contributes regularly to Artforum and ArtReview and is the author of Club Cultures and co-author of The Subcultures Reader. She lives in London. She made her first TV appearance in Alan Yentob's programme on the Frieze arts fair, and several others are in the pipeline.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Art and business, personal quests and personality cults, big bucks and the triumph of concept over beauty, being cool and in the know—these are the cardinal points in the contemporary art world. Enter Thornton, an art historian and sociologist with moxie and a brilliant game plan. Willing to ask obvious questions, she infiltrates the seven circles of this competitive realm. An astute observer and stimulating storyteller whose crisp sentences convey a wealth of information, Thornton marvels at the military precision of a Christie’s auction and the wild improvisation of an art-school critique.  On to Art Basel, a major international art fair where the “hard buy” rather than the hard sell is the rule since an artist’s reputation is tied to those who own his or her work. Thornton witnesses the final stage in the judging and presentation of the Turner Prize, watches editors at work at Artforum, attends the coveted Venice Biennale, and spends a dizzying day with the wizardly artist-entrepreneur Takashi Murakami. Thornton’s uniquely clarifying dispatches from the art front glimmer with high-definition profiles of artists, dealers, critics, and collectors, and grapple with the paradoxes inherent in the transformation of creativity into commodity. --Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1847080847
• ISBN 13: 9781847080844
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304