Talking Prices
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Talking Prices

Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art

Olav Velthuis

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eBook - PDF

Talking Prices

Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art

Olav Velthuis

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About This Book

How do dealers price contemporary art in a world where objective criteria seem absent? Talking Prices is the first book to examine this question from a sociological perspective. On the basis of a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data, including interviews with art dealers in New York and Amsterdam, Olav Velthuis shows how contemporary art galleries juggle the contradictory logics of art and economics. In doing so, they rely on a highly ritualized business repertoire. For instance, a sharp distinction between a gallery's museumlike front space and its businesslike back space safeguards the separation of art from commerce.
Velthuis shows that prices, far from being abstract numbers, convey rich meanings to trading partners that extend well beyond the works of art. A high price may indicate not only the quality of a work but also the identity of collectors who bought it before the artist's reputation was established. Such meanings are far from unequivocal. For some, a high price may be a symbol of status; for others, it is a symbol of fraud.
Whereas sociological thought has long viewed prices as reducing qualities to quantities, this pathbreaking and engagingly written book reveals the rich world behind these numerical values. Art dealers distinguish different types of prices and attach moral significance to them. Thus the price mechanism constitutes a symbolic system akin to language.

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Information

Publisher
Princeton University Press
Year
2013
ISBN
9781400849406
Topic
Social Sciences
Subtopic
Sociology
Index
Social Sciences
resemble 
those 
of 
construction 
sites. 
The 
minimal 
decoration, 
absence 
of
furniture, 
and 
lighting 
of 
the 
gallery 
space 
create 
an 
atmosphere 
that
reinforces 
the 
autonomy 
of 
the 
artwork 
on 
display, 
and 
keeps 
commerce
at 
bay 
(Moulin 
1967 
[1987], 
p. 
154; 
Troy 
1996, 
p. 
113). 
The 
uniformity
of 
this 
basic 
structure 
of 
the 
gallery 
space 
is 
striking. 
It 
cannot 
only 
be
found 
in 
art 
capitals 
like 
Amsterdam 
and 
New 
York, 
but 
also 
in 
avant-
garde 
galleries 
located 
in 
small 
towns 
throughout 
the 
Western 
world.
Their 
architecture 
is 
one 
of 
the 
many 
examples 
of 
the 
market’s 
isomor-
phism, 
as 
institutional 
sociologists 
have 
come 
to 
refer 
to 
it 
(DiMaggio
and 
Powell 
1983). 
The 
minimalist, 
austere 
architectural 
language 
links
avant-garde 
gallery 
spaces 
on 
the 
one 
hand 
to 
the 
noncommercial 
world
of 
museums 
and 
on 
the 
other 
hand 
to 
the 
commercial 
world 
of 
luxury
commodities. 
Indeed, 
one 
of 
the 
well-known 
architects 
of 
gallery 
spaces,
Richard 
Gluckman 
of 
the 
architectural 
firm 
Gluckman 
Mayner 
Archi-
tects, 
who 
designed 
the 
gallery 
spaces 
of 
renowned 
New 
York 
art 
dealers
like 
Paula 
Cooper, 
Mary 
Boone, 
Luhring 
Augustine, 
Andrea 
Rosen, 
and
Larry 
Gagosian, 
has 
also 
designed 
retail 
spaces 
of 
well-known 
luxury
Architecture 
of 
the 
Art 
Market
•
31
Avant-garde 
galleries 
in 
SoHo, 
New 
York, 
are 
replaced 
by 
design 
stores.
Photo:
author.

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