Seven Days in the Art World By: Sarah Thornton

PLAY AUDIOBOOK

Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert

• Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins

• Release date: 12-23-14

• Language: English

• 4 out of 5 stars376 ratings

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Publisher's summary

The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion.

In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture.

©2008 Sarah Thornton (P)2014 Tantor