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

His most reproduced disaster silkscreen is 1947 White, a news photograph of a fashion model who jumped from the Empire State Building and landed on the roof of a diplomatic limousine.

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.

ART PRICE RECORDS THE MOST EXPENSIVE PAINTINGS SOLD AT AUCTION Garçon à la Pipe (1905), Pablo Picasso, $104 million, Sotheby’s New York, 2004 Dora Maar au Chat (1941), Pablo Picasso, $95.2 million, Sotheby’s New York, 2006 Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890), Vincent van Gogh, $82.5 million, Christie’s New York, 1990 (resold privately through a Sotheby’s

The price a dealer charges for work by a new artist is based on the reputation of the gallery and the size of the work rather than any measure of its quality. No artist is actually ever referred to as new; they are called “emerging,” which describes where the artist is coming from, not where she is going. Emerging is an art world term that means un

“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

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

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.

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 F

“I like the idea of a thing to describe a feeling.