The $12 Million Shark: The Fascinating Economics of the Contemporary Art World. Don Thompson

Why did a New York investment banker pay $12 million for a shark carcass in formalin? What is the alchemy behind a $140 million deal to sell a Jackson Pollock painting? Why do auction records set one year and then break them several times over the next? Why did Impressionist paintings, despite their undeniable artistic value, plummet in value in the 1990s?
Don Thompson writes about money—real big money—and the lust and self-aggrandizement of the art world. He analyzes how some art objects are priced and others ignored, and how the value of a work of art correlates with its value.
This book is the first to examine the economics and marketing strategies that allow the contemporary art market to generate such astronomical prices. Drawing on interviews with past and present auction house and gallery executives, artists, and buyers who fuel and define the market, Don Thompson lifts the veil on the financial secrecy of the world of high art. Revelation and gossip, passion and frenzy, the art market lives by its own unpredictable and surprising rules.