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Title

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art

Donald Thompson

Review

Why would anyone pay $12 million for the decaying carcass of a shark suspended in a small, fake aquarium? Is it the lure of acquiring anything by Damien Hirst, the most shameless self-promoter since Salvador Dali? The quasi-philosophical title of the shark is "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living." Does the title alone qualify it as art because it gives the viewers a hint that it is a memento mori? Maybe, but the real question of this book is "How does the art world assign value to art, and why do people pay it?"

The financial sector drives the high-end art market to great heights of absurdity because high-end art can be tax dodges and a show of conspicuous consumption for the obscenely wealthy. This is a crying shame for many reasons: outsider artists without a circus-barker promoter cannot get a buyer; the prices drive most collectors out of the market; art critics and auction houses collude to create buzz and drive prices up; art museum directors are pressured by their boards who have gotten caught up in the buzz; museums buy overpriced art that chew up their limited budgets and sometimes their floorspace (think Chihuly in a museum near by); and then worst of all, kids on field trips glaze over with boredom while teachers try to convince them that they should be impressed, and kids grow up to be adults who don't support the arts.

Many people confuse the worth of aesthetic objects with their financial worth - anyone who has ever watched "Antiques Roadshow" knows that the punchline is the price tag, not the knowledge that the Keno brothers are trying to convey. Good art should surprise, enthrall, disgust, enrage, inspire. High-end, high-priced art may or may not elicit such feelings, but after reading this book, you can learn to distinguish between valuing art for its monetary worth and valuing it because it expresses a new idea, a different viewpoint on the familiar, or stops you dead in your tracks, regardless of its pedigree.  ~ Abbey Warner

Also recommended on this topic: Sotheby's: bidding for class, a look inside an auction house.

Review Date

Reviewed November 2010