Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying,
stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock’s drip painting No. 5,
1948 sell for $140 million?
Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a
Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world.
Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary
artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores
the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what
makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.
This book is the first to look at the economics and the marketing strategies
that enable the modern art market to generate such astronomical prices. Drawing on
interviews with past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships,
artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a journey of
discovery through the peculiar world of modern art. Surprising, passionate, gossipy,
revelatory, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark reveals a great deal that even experienced
auction purchasers do not know.
DON THOMPSON is a professor and economist at the Schulich School of Business,
specializing in marketing, economic regulation, and strategic planning. He has taught at
the University of Toronto, Harvard University, and the London School of Economics, and
holds an M.B.A. and Ph.D from the University of California, and an LL.M from Osgoode Hall
Law School. Thompson has served as a consultant to government agencies and organizations
in Canada, the US, the UK, France, Australia, Israel, China, Thailand, Laos, Oman, Sri
Lanka and Turkey, consulting for companies as diverse as Procter & Gamble, IBM,
Wal-Mart and British Airlines. He is the author or co-author of nine books.
Table of Contents
• Branding and Insecurity
• Branded Auctions
• Branded Dealers
• The Art of the Dealer
• Art and Artists
• Damien Hirst and the Shark
• Warhol, Koons, and Emin
• Charles Saatchi: Branded Collector
• Christie’s and Sotheby’s
• Choosing an Auction Hammer
• Auction Psychology
• The Secret World of Auctions
• Francis Bacon’s Perfect Portrait
• Auction Houses vs Dealers
• Art Fairs: The Dealer’s Final Frontier
• Art and Money
• Pricing Contemporary Art
• Fakes
• Art Critics
• Museums
• End Game
• Contemporary Art as an Investment
• Postscript
272 pages, Paperback