The world of dealers includes men and women of the highest integrity, many of whom are experts on the work of the artists they sell, on the same level as museum curators or university professors.

Branding is the end result of the experiences a company creates with its customers and the media over a long period of time—and of the clever marketing and public relations that go into creating and reinforcing those experiences.

Branding adds personality, distinctiveness, and value to a product or service. It also offers risk avoidance and trust.

When MoMA displays an artist’s work, it conveys a shared branding, adding to the work of the artist a luster that the art world calls provenance.

Only one artist in two hundred—and that is two hundred established artists—will reach a point where her work is ever offered at Christie’s or Sotheby’s auctions.

Segalot’s twelve artists of the 1980s and ’90s (he had trouble narrowing it to ten) are Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat (creator of Untitled), Cindy Sherman (a photographer), Richard Prince, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (of candy-sculpture fame), Charles Ray, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, David Hammons, Andreas Gursky, Damien Hirst,

In the end, the question “what is judged to be valuable contemporary art” is determined first by major dealers, later by branded auction houses, a bit by museum curators who stage special shows, very little by art critics, and hardly at all by buyers. High prices are created by branded dealers promoting particular artists, by a few artists successf

In contemporary art, the greatest value-adding component comes from the branded auction houses, Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

What do you hope to acquire when you bid at a prestigious evening auction at Sotheby’s? A bundle of things: a painting of course, but hopefully also a new dimension to how people see you. As Robert Lacey described it in his book about Sotheby’s, you are bidding for class, for a validation of your taste.