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Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock’s drip painting No. 5, 1948 sell for $140 million?
Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.
This book is the first to look at the economics and the marketing strategies that enable the modern art market to generate such astronomical prices. Drawing on interviews with both past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a journey of discovery through the peculiar world of modern art. Surprising, passionate, gossipy, revelatory, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark reveals a great deal that even experienced auction purchasers do not know.
The $12 Million Stuffed Shark and Don Thompson in the news:
The Houston Chronicle ran a review on Oct 19, 2008, saying: “Thompson, who, appropriately, comes from a marketing and economics background, guides us through this bizarro art world with a useful sequence of overviews and case studies. . . [a] well-written book.”
The Buffalo News ran a review on Oct 19, 2008, calling the book “unsparing look at egos gone wild, a picture of a world rife with conflicts of interest. . . an incredible achievement.”
The Boston Globe ran a review, Oct 19, 2008
Art Info, Oct 14, 2008
The New York Observer review, Sept. 19, 2008
Nick Gillespie calls The $12 Million Stuffed Shark “insightful and compulsively readable." Sept 2, 2008 Read the whole review in The New York Post and Reason Magazine
The Journal of Lincoln Heights Literary Society says“This is a damn fine book. . . the flow and wit of the writing kept me on the edge of my seat.”
THE NEW YORK SUN reviews The $12 Million Stuffed Shark
"If you read no other book about art in your life, read the one that’s gripped me like a thriller for the past two days…it’s called the $12 Million Stuffed Shark.” --Richard Morrison, The Times (London)
"…it’s lucid, well researched and, while carefully balanced, manages to retain a sharp edge ." --Telegraph UK
"A new book by an economist named Don Thompson entitled $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art ought to be required reading for collectors intending to wade into well publicized contemporary art auctions…" --The Economist.com
"[An] informative an occasionally hilarious look at the surreal contemporary art market... A clear-headed approach to a frequently high-pitched issue." --Kirkus
Don Thompson teaches marketing and economics in the MBA program at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. He has taught at the London School of Economics and at Harvard Business School. He lives in London and Toronto.
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