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.
eBook - PDF
Talking Prices
Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art
- 289 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
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Information
Publisher
Princeton University PressYear
2013Print ISBN
9780691134031
9780691121666
eBook ISBN
9781400849406
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.
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- List of Tables and Graphs
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- CHAPTER 1: The Architecture of the Art Market
- CHAPTER 2: Exchanging Meaning
- CHAPTER 3: Promoters versus Parasites
- CHAPTER 4: Determinants of Prices
- CHAPTER 5: The Art of Pricing
- CHAPTER 6: Stories of Prices
- CHAPTER 7: Symbolic Meanings of Prices
- CHAPTER 8: Conclusion
- Appendix A Interview Questionnaire
- Appendix B Description of Interview Sample
- Appendix C Record Prices for Art
- Appendix D Multilevel Analysis of Prices for Art
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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Yes, you can access Talking Prices by Olav Velthuis in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & History of Contemporary Art. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.