How The Art World Works: New Book Tells The Full Story

Curious about the art world? Have a daughter who wants to be an artist? Is your cousin graduating from college this year with an art degree? Well, then set them on the right path with Sarah Thornton's new book Seven Days in the Art World.

Hollywood, it has been said, is like high school with money: cliquish, catty and status-obsessed, awash in insecurity and plagued by conflicting desires to stand out and to fit in. The same might be said of the contemporary art world, particularly during the glitzy boom years chronicled by Sarah Thornton in her entertaining new book, Seven Days in the Art World.

A freelance journalist with a background in sociology, Thornton spent five years air-kissing her way through art fairs, auction houses and artists' studios as a "participant observer" intent on decoding the manners and mores of this globe-trotting Prada-clad tribe. What she learned, among other things, is that wealthy collectors buy expensive works of art for a variety of reasons - vanity, social status, an appetite for novelty and, most important of all, an acute excess of money. As one of her auction house informers bluntly puts it, "After you have a fourth home and a G5 jet, what else is there?"

The book is cleverly divided into seven day-in-the-life chapters, each focusing on a different facet of the contemporary art world: an auction (at Christie's New York), an art school "crit" (at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia), an art fair (Art Basel), an artist's studio (that of the Japanese star Takashi Murakami), a prize (Britain's prestigious Turner Prize), a magazine (Artforum) and a biennale (Venice).

Thornton is a smart and savvy guide with a keen understanding of the subtle power dynamics that animate each of these interconnected milieus. In a vivid opening chapter, she captures the adrenaline-fueled atmosphere of an evening auction at Christie's, expertly parsing the status hierarchy of the salesroom seating plan (aisle seats for high rollers, private skyboxes for vendors, standing room for the press).

Get a copy of the book now: Seven Days in the Art Worldor read more of the review.

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