That is not the purpose of this book: I have happily yielded that task to the curators and critics. There are many books, magazines, journals, and blogs that debate the relative merits of contemporary artists and the lasting value of their work. Artists rise and sometimes fall in a few years some do work that is clearly gorgeous, others make off-putting, head-scratching, shocking, or even viscerally appalling work. It hasn’t happened yet, but they are confident they can push the price there soon.Ĭontemporary art is a hard subject to get your arms around these days. Now, dealers and auctioneers are seeking the first billion-dollar painting. This kaleidoscopic history begins in the mid-1940s in genteel poverty with a scattering of galleries in midtown Manhattan, takes us through the ramshackle 1950s studios of Coenties Slip, the hipster locations in SoHo and Chelsea, London’s Bond Street, and across the terraces of Art Basel until today. He has spoken to all of today’s so-called mega dealers - Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner, Arne and Marc Glimcher, and Iwan Wirth - along with dozens of other dealers - from Irving Blum to Gavin Brown - who worked with the greatest artists of their times: Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and more. Michael Shnayerson, a longtime contributing editor to Vanity Fair, writes the first ever definitive history of their activities. But none of it would happen without the dealers-the tastemakers who back emerging artists and steer them to success, often to see them picked off by a rival.ĭealers operate within a private world of handshake agreements, negotiating for the highest commissions. The contemporary art market is an international juggernaut, throwing off multimillion-dollar deals as wealthy buyers move from fair to fair, auction to auction, party to glittering party.

They can make and break careers and fortunes. The meteoric rise of the largest unregulated financial market in the world - for contemporary art - is driven by a few passionate, guileful, and very hard-nosed dealers.

Lips Like Ice by Peggy Barnett