As soon as I got the last issue of The Jackdaw in this morning’s mail, I started reading David Lee’s editorial. A few seconds later I stumbled upon Don Thompson’s The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art,[1] which is cited in the third paragraph. Straight away I dashed to my computer, and a few minutes afterwards I placed my order with Amazon. Call me impulsive, but the economics of contemporary art is an old fascination of mine. And the art market is curious, indeed. Off the wall, as a matter of fact. Not in terms of what is going on within the art market itself, but in terms of what is allowed to go on within it from without. For it has conflict of interests written all over it. What passes for perfectly normal behavior in the art market would land you in jail in any other market. On occasion it borders on organized crime. For some curious reason, the law is oblivious to all this although huge sums are passing hands all the while and fortunes are made as a matter of course. And I am dying to see if Thompson has anything to say about this noxious nexus.

Addendum I (February 26, 2008)

Thompson’s book arrived in this morning’s mail. I ripped the Amazon package open quite impatiently, and I went through the book rather feverishly. So far, there is no sign of the noxious nexus, though. The legal foundations of the art world are not even mentioned. Of course, I am yet to read the book, but I have a good hunch of its contents already. Much of what is reported is based on anecdotes, some of which are revealing enough. But Thompson’s approach is not of his choice, for the art world is forever shrouded in mystery. This is best illustrated by the story about Damien Hirst’s stuffed shark from the book’s title. It was purchased in 2005 by Steve Cohen, a financial wheeler-dealer from Greenwich, Connecticut. However, the twelve million dollars price tag is far from sure. It is only the most often quoted figure. The highest such figure is thirteen million, and the lowest is eight.[2] Which only goes to show that the art world perforce remains shrouded in mystery. Not even the prices of art works are known with any degree of certainty. And this is the very keystone in its flimsy legal foundations.

Addendum II (February 28, 2008)

Although Thompson brings up a wide variety of conflicts of interest in the art market,[3] the only place where he explores the subject in some depth is a chapter on auction houses, such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s.[4] In this context he mentions a recent attempt to regulate auction houses. In 1991 a New York State committee held hearings on auction house practices and proposed various legal remedies that would eradicate conflicts of interest.[5] In the end, auction houses wriggled out, though. Nothing came of the proposed legislation, leaving the auction market, as one commentator put it, as a place “where consenting adults can indulge in irrational private acts.”[6] The rich and powerful must want the art market exactly as it is: unregulated to boot.

Footnotes

1. London: Aurum, 2008.

2. Op. cit., pp. 3-4.

3. Op. cit., e.g., pp. 46, 83, 109, 147, 263.

4. Op. cit., “The Secret World of Auctions,” pp. 145-159.

5. Op. cit., p. 157.

6. Op. cit., p. 158.