A clear-headed approach to a frequently high-pitched issue.
Informative and occasionally hilarious look at the surreal contemporary art market.
This world has been fodder for mockery ever since Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal and proclaimed it art, but there’s a whole lot more money at stake now, notes Thompson (Marketing and Economics/York Univ.). He bravely attempts to apply theories of basic economics and markets to the contemporary art scene, in which absurdity frequently rules. Evincing astute knowledge of the arcane workings of high-end art galleries and auction houses, the author walks readers through the mechanics of how a contemporary artist’s work comes to be regarded as worthy of notice. Among the factors at play, Thompson avers, the artwork’s quality is rarely prominent. Indeed, he notes, many of the pieces discussed—from Francis Bacon’s disquieting studies of morbidity to Jeff Koons’s glossy essays in camp—are not what most people would want to display in their homes or offices. The text makes it clear that who wants to buy a piece of art and how much they are willing pay for it matter more than its actual content. Damien Hirst—the artist who got $12 million for a shark packed with formaldehyde and mounted in a glass case—would probably be nobody if he had not been noticed by the right dealers and thus “branded” to the super-rich as an artist of note. “You are nobody in contemporary art until you have been branded,” declares Thompson. He makes no judgment about this fact, but simply notes the absurdities, categorizes them and moves on. Sticking to the numbers leads him to a simple conclusion: “Art is neither a good investment nor an efficient investment vehicle.”
A clear-headed approach to a frequently high-pitched issue.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-230-61022-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
Maslowski (History/University of Nebraska at Lincoln) breaks fresh ground with a comprehensive history of WW II's anonymous heroes: its combat photographers. It may be that neither the brilliant general nor the loyal foot soldier was more crucial to America's WW II effort than the lowly combat photographer, who allowed civilians to witness what no one but soldiers had ever seen, and whose work proved invaluable to both generals and military analysts. The obstacles faced by these soldier/photographers were daunting: the weight of a motion-picture camera and film supply could stagger a man or a mule, and the official still camera was a Speed Graphic, so big and shiny that to pop it up from a foxhole invariably drew a hail of enemy bullets. The superior, lightweight German Leica camera was reverse- engineered by American labs but reached the front only in 1945; by then, however, American combat photographers had their own Leicas- -bought from looters. To assure the credibility of their film documentaries, the armed services had a strict policy of no ``reenactments''—but the trouble was, as one Omaha Beach veteran who later became a Hollywood director pointed out, the real thing didn't look as good as the movies: ``To do it right you'd have to blind the audience with smoke, deafen them with noise, then shoot one of them in the shoulder to scare the rest to death.'' The first great combat-movie breakthrough was John Huston's San Pietro, which documented the liberation of an Italian town. It was released to great acclaim (Time magazine declared that Huston's handiwork was ``as good a war film as any that has been made...remarkable in its honesty and excellence''), but in a fascinating display of historical sleuthing, Maslowski shows that many scenes in San Pietro were staged—including reenacted dialogue and ``dead Germans'' that were actually live GIs dressed in enemy uniforms. Virtuoso scholarship, formidably researched and exciting to read.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-920265-5
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
The art critic for The National Review bashes the contemporary art world and rails about the ``general paltriness of most art in our time.'' Gardner complains that the art world is riddled with money and glamour, and blames the ``artistic recession'' on ``art's obsession with art'' and ``nothing other than the pervasive and unchecked reverence in which art is held by critics and public alike.'' He covers the art front from the East Village Scene (``[East Village artists] have been out of fashion for several years, and the pyramids of Egypt seem not as old as they'') to Body Art and German Neo-Expressionism, as well as numerous artists: David Hockney, David Salle, Gerhard Richter (``one of the finest painters alive''), Keith Haring, Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, et al. ``Speaking as an enthusiast rather than as a critic,'' Gardner says, ``I find that what appeals most in the art of my contemporaries is, strangely, its smell...the freshness of acrylic on canvas....'' In addition to going after easy targets like the Whitney Biennial (``a country club from which only straight white males are excluded'') and Jeff Koons, the author dismisses the works of Anselm Kiefer—who ``plays the Sturm und Drang role to perfection''—as ``frail in conception, listless in execution, impressive only because of their size.'' But Gardner delivers a body blow here to his own argument as well by quoting a few phrases of the evocative prose and penetrating analysis of Robert Hughes, who described Kiefer as trying ``to shoulder the content of historical tragedy.'' In general, shallow kvetching. For serious, balanced, and truly provocative studies of contemporary art, see Hughes's Nothing if Not Critical (1990), or Arthur Danto's Encounters and Reflections (1990) and Beyond the Brillo Box (1992).
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-55972-208-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Birch Lane Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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