Don Thompson

Why would a very smart New York investment banker pay twelve million dollars for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock''s drip painting No.5 1948 sell for 0 million? And why does a leather jacket with silver chain attached, tossed in a corner and titled ''No One Ever Leaves'', bring 0,000 at a 2007 Sotheby''s auction? The Twelve Million Dollar Stuffed Shark is the first book to look at the economics of the modern art world and the marketing strategies which power the market to produce such astronomical prices. Don Thompson talks to auction houses, dealers, and collectors to find out the source of Charles Saatchi''s Midas touch, and how far a gallery like White Cube has contributed to Damien Hirst becoming the highest-earning artist in the world. He unravels the Byzantine sale procedures by which the top auction houses maintain both premium prices for what they sell and their own pre-eminence, but also shows us a market whose most spectacular excesses are driven just as often by far simpler human urges like lust and self-aggrandizement. It is a world in which brand is all-important, and which in many ways has most in common with the branded world of luxury fashion. The result is a fascinating, shrewd and highly readable insight into a modern-day phenomenon. Don Thompson is an economist and professor of business specialising in art. He has taught at the London School of Economics and the Harvard Business School. This is his first trade book. He lives in London and Toronto.

Illustrator: Paul Orban

Illustrator: VIDMER

Un banquero multimillonario invierte 12 millones de dólares por el cadáver de un tiburón descomponiéndose dentro de una tinaja. Un lienzo lleno de gotas de colores se vende por 140 millones de dólares. Una chaqueta de cuero abandonada en una esquina se subasta por la suma de 690.000 dolares. Si el negocio del arte moderno es serio, ¿por que parece una broma? En este recorrido ameno y fascinante por las casas de subastas, las galerias y el mundo de los coleccionistas, Don Thompson desvela los secretos economicos y las estrategias de marketing que impulsan al mercado a producir los precios astronomicos a los que se cotizan las obras de los grandes artistas, de Basquiat a Koons, Tapies o Jasper Johns. Thompson nos acerca a la psicologia y los intereses que mueven el mercado artistico para recordarnos que en el arte contemporaneo, como en tantos otros campos, la linea que separa la cultura y el negocio es difusa pero clara.

El arte trata sobre la vida. El mercado del arte trata sobre el dinero. Un libro que desvela los entresijos de la industria del arte contemporáneo, de sus absurdos y sus desmanes.«Esto es arte porqu