When Art Meets Money: Encounters at the Art Basel. This item is unavailable.When Art Meets Money: Encounters at the Art Basel

Art Basel is more than just a fair in the commercial sense of the word, more than a concentrated gathering of dealers offering their goods for sale to interested buyers. It is the site of display of holy goods in the presence of thousands and thousands of believers, a mecca for the ritualized adoration of modern and contemporary art. It is also the decisive witness of the upheaval marking a radical change in the relationship between art and money, with all of the consequences―not least, the evaluation of what is to be regarded as "genuine" art. When Art Meets Money offers a sociological study in the vein of Pierre Bourdieu, the result of several years of field work, attempting to draw a picture of this change as perceived by the participants, fair organizers, gallerists, collectors, curators, art consultants and artists as a central problem of the contemporary art scene.

The Art Basel is more than just a fair in the commercial sense of the word, more than a temporally and spatially concentrated gathering of dealers offering their goods for sale to interested buyers. It is at the same time the site of a display of 'holy' goods in the presence of thousands and thousands of believers, a pilgrim's goal for the ritualized adoration of modern and contemporary art. It is also, and for precisely this reason, the decisive witness of the upheaval marking a radical change in that relationship between 'art' and 'money' - with all the consequences, not least for the evaluation of what is to be regarded as 'genuine' art. This present study, the result of several years of sociological field work, attempts to draw a picture of this change as perceived by the participants, the organizers of the fair, the gallerists, collectors, curators, art consultants and artists, as a central problem of the contemporary art scene.