Since art collectors cannot always fathom the value code, they understandably do not trust their own judgment. Their recourse is often to rely on branding. Collectors patronize branded dealers, bid at branded auction houses, visit branded art fairs, and seek out branded artists. You are nobody in contemporary art until you have been branded.

“Never underestimate how insecure buyers are about contemporary art, and how much they always need reassurance.” This is a truth that everyone in the art trade seems to understand, but no one talks about. The insecurity does not mean art buyers lack ability. It simply means that for the wealthy, time is their scarcest resource. They are not willing

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.

When an artist becomes branded, the market tends to accept as legitimate whatever the artist submits.

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.

Of the thousand artists who had serious gallery shows in New York and London during the 1980s, no more than twenty were offered in evening auctions at Christie’s or Sotheby’s in 2007. Eight of ten works purchased directly from an artist and half the works purchased at auction will never again resell at their purchase price.

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.

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.

TWENTY-FIVE MAJOR CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS Jasper Johns (American, 1930–) Andy Warhol (American, 1928–87) Gerhard Richter (German, 1932–) Bruce Nauman (American, 1941–) Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923–97) Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925–2008) Joseph Beuys (German, 1921–86) Ed Ruscha (American, 1937–) Francis Bacon (Irish/English, 1909–92) Lucian