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The time is surely ripe for an investigation into the shady shenanigans of this notoriously secretive world.

In between are absorbing fly-on-the-wall pieces about the annual Art Basel fair in Switzerland,giubbotti moncler, the Turner Prize and a fascinating visit to the studio of Japanese art superstar Takashi Murakami.
Collectors cajole to ensure that they are first in line to acquire a new “masterpiece''. Big auctions are characterised as highly stylised ceremonies of cocksure strutting.
We get a clear sense of quackery and monstrous egos but the art world's murkier goings-on are rarely illuminated.
But within hours of the hammer coming down on the final lot, rumours started to fly around, questioning the sale's record-breaking success.
Perhaps this is because, as she reveals in her acknowledgments,Moncler outlet, Thornton invited some interviewees to read draft chapters and offer feedback.
The book opens with a caustic pen-portrait of an evening auction at Christie's in New York in 2004 and ends with an account of Thornton's trip to last year's Venice Biennale, a fiesta of air-kissing and non-stop gossip.
This was surely a mistake. As a result,Piumini Moncler, Thornton is too much like a toothless court jester.
City boys who want to speculate on art as a commodity are seen as the lowest of the low.
For many critics, the sale represented the conflation of aesthetic worth and monetary value that has infected almost every aspect of the contemporary art scene over the past two decades.
This strikes me as probably true but Thornton still doesn't get to the bottom of why particular artists become popular at particular times.
There is very little, for instance,doudoune moncler pas cher, about the recent fads for Russian and Chinese art at auction.
The hotel one stays in during the Venice Biennale, for instance, is of paramount importance. Thornton's access is impeccable and her book contains many juicy quotes.
She is indulged by the art world's great and good but when it comes to really spilling the beans, she is ignored.
One of the more serious questions posed by the book is: How is a consensus on a work of art or artist reached?
Thornton says the answer is that the super-rich buy art for social reasons. Taste,Giubbotto Moncler Uomo, she argues, is determined by the vagaries of fashion.
Outside on the red carpet, paparazzi flashbulbs lit up the evening sky; inside,moncler quincy, the never-ending pop of champagne corks competed with the high-pitched patter of frantic socialising.
Recently, for instance, hundreds of insiders, socialites, freeloaders, gossip-mongers and sundry other hangers-on flocked to the opening of the new Saatchi ############## in Chelsea.
Something is rotten in the world of contemporary art. Banks keep toppling like ninepins. The world's stock markets plunge ever deeper into the abyss.
Thornton also fails to explain why a painting by, say, Francis Bacon — which is, after all, nothing but pigment on canvas — generates quite so much pandemonium when it comes up for sale. Why have humans evolved to make status symbols of their art?
But her approach can feel limited. She describes the excesses of the art world with energy, clarity and panache but in the final reckoning she doesn't dig up that much dirt.
Power play and status anxiety are recurrent themes. Dealers squabble over prime locations for their booths at art fairs.

Art as event
Sadly Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World, which took five years to research and write, is not a whistle-blowing piece of reportage.
It was a similar story,Giubbotto Moncler Donna, when the most powerful plutocrats on the planet flew to London to bid for 223 new works of art by Damien Hirst at Sotheby's recently.
Yet the art trade appears invulnerable, with dealers,moncler quincy, ############## owners and collectors whooping it up at exhibition openings every night of the week. Haven't they heard the story about Nero and his violin?
But it is a definitive primer to the ever-booming contemporary art scene. Each of its seven chapters offers an in-depth examination of a different facet of today's art world based on up to 40 substantial interviews and many hours of what she calls “behind-the-scenes ‘participant observation'''.
During the flagship evening auction, 56 lots sold for £70.5 million — just hours after news had filtered through that Lehman Brothers had gone bankrupt.
Thornton is at her best when she keeps one eye on her moral compass, writing with a satirist's ferocious passion.
By the end of the two-day sale, Hirst had made £111.5 million. The contrast between his exorbitant profit and the woeful economic outlook for the rest of the world could not have been more dramatic.
An academic with a PhD in sociology, Thornton is interested in human behaviour and much of the book describes the hierarchies that structure this world of money and power.
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