Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art Audiobook (Free)

The meteoric rise of the largest unregulated financial market in the world-for contemporary art-is driven by a few passionate, guileful, and incredibly hard-nosed dealers. They are able to make and break careers and fortunes. The modern art market can be an international juggernaut, tossing off multimillion-dollar offers as wealthy buyers move from fair to fair, public sale to public sale, party to glittering party. But non-e of it could happen with no dealers-the tastemakers who back again emerging artists and steer about Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, as well as the Rise of Contemporary Artwork them to achievement, often to observe them selected off with a rival. Sellers operate within an exclusive world of handshake contracts, negotiating for the highest commissions. Michael Shnayerson, a longtime contributing editor to Vanity Good, writes the 1st ever definitive background of their actions. He provides spoken to all or any of today’s so-called mega dealers-Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner, Arne and Marc Glimcher, and Iwan Wirth-along with a large number of other dealers-from Irving Blum to Gavin Brown-who caused the greatest artists of their times: Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and more. This kaleidoscopic history starts in the mid-1940s in genteel poverty having a scattering of galleries in midtown Manhattan, requires us through the ramshackle 1950s studios of Coenties Slide, the hipster locations in SoHo and Chelsea, London’s Bond Street, and across the terraces of Art Basel until today. Today, sellers and auctioneers would like the first billion-dollar painting. It hasn’t happened yet, however they are confident they can drive the purchase price there soon.