Review by New York Times Review
A tour of the art world. HOLLYWOOD, it has been said, is like high school with money: cliquish, catty and status-obsessed, awash in insecurity and plagued by conflicting desires to stand out and to fit in. The same might be said of the contemporary art world, particularly during the glitzy boom years chronicled by Sarah Thornton in her entertaining new book, "Seven Days in the Art World." A freelance journalist with a background in sociology, Thornton spent five years air-kissing her way through art fairs, auction houses and artists' studios as a "participant observer" intent on decoding the manners and mores of this globe-trotting Prada-clad tribe. What she learned, among other things, is that wealthy collectors buy expensive works of art for a variety of reasons vanity, social status, an appetite for novelty and, most important of all, an acute excess of money. As one of her auction-house informers bluntly puts it, "After you have a fourth home and a G5 jet, what else is there?" The book is cleverly divided into seven day-in-the-life chapters, each focusing on a different facet of the contemporary art world: an auction (at Christie's New York), an art school "crit" (at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia), an art fair (Art Basel), an artist's studio (that of the Japanese star Takashi Murakami), a prize (Britain's prestigious Turner Prize), a magazine (Artforum) and a biennale (Venice). Thornton is a smart and savvy guide with a keen understanding of the subtle power dynamics that animate each of these interconnected milieus. In a vivid opening chapter, she captures the adrenaline-fueled atmosphere of an evening auction at Christie's, expertly parsing the status hierarchy of the salesroom seating plan (aisle seats for high rollers, private skyboxes for vendors, standing room for the press). At the Venice Biennale, the conceptual artist John Baldessari tells her, "You can judge artists' stock prices based on how many parties they get invited to." At Art Basel, dealers vie for prime locations for their booths and then complain about the lack of privacy. ("It is like being a whore in Amsterdam," one New York gallery owner gripes.) Collectors try to wheedle their way onto closely guarded waiting lists for new work by the hottest art stars. Even placing an ad in Artforum requires a serious quotient of coolness. "Just because you can afford to pay doesn't mean you get in," one of the magazine's publishers sniffs. The kind of research Thornton does is often described as "fly on the wall," but she prefers to think of herself as a "cat on the prowl." A good participant observer, she writes, is "like a stray cat ... curious and interactive but not threatening." This approach clearly gained her extraordinary access to an insular world not known for its openness or transparency. And while she's never overtly critical of the shenanigans she recounts, the early chapters are written with the amused skepticism of a well-informed outsider. BUT somewhere along the line, Thornton's perspective shifts. Her questions become less challenging, her narratives more conciliatory. In short, she becomes an insider. In her chapter on Artforum, she discloses that in exchange for access she agreed to write freelance dispatches for the magazine's gossipy online diary, "Scene and Herd." Did this hinder her ability to represent the magazine in an objective light? Maybe not. But as the art historian Thomas Crow says later in the same chapter, "There has to be a space between you and the people you're writing about, so you're not just echoing the situation you're trying to analyze." Today, as the art market heads for its first major crash since 1990, the situation this book so engagingly echoes - new money's glamorous infatuation with new art - is rapidly coming to an end. Maybe now Thornton, or someone else, can tell us what it all meant. Mia Fineman writes frequently about art and culture for Slate.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Art and business, personal quests and personality cults, big bucks and the triumph of concept over beauty, being cool and in the know these are the cardinal points in the contemporary art world. Enter Thornton, an art historian and sociologist with moxie and a brilliant game plan. Willing to ask obvious questions, she infiltrates the seven circles of this competitive realm. An astute observer and stimulating storyteller whose crisp sentences convey a wealth of information, Thornton marvels at the military precision of a Christie's auction and the wild improvisation of an art-school critique. On to Art Basel, a major international art fair where the hard buy rather than the hard sell is the rule since an artist's reputation is tied to those who own his or her work. Thornton witnesses the final stage in the judging and presentation of the Turner Prize, watches editors at work at Artforum, attends the coveted Venice Biennale, and spends a dizzying day with the wizardly artist-entrepreneur Takashi Murakami. Thornton's uniquely clarifying dispatches from the art front glimmer with high-definition profiles of artists, dealers, critics, and collectors, and grapple with the paradoxes inherent in the transformation of creativity into commodity.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Starred Review. The hot, hip contemporary art world, argues sociologist Thornton, is a cluster of intermingling subcultures unified by the belief, whether genuine or feigned, that nothing is more important than the art itself. It is a conviction, she asserts, that has transformed contemporary art into a kind of alternative religion for atheists. Thornton, a contributor to Artforum.com and the New Yorker, presents an astute and often entertaining ethnography of this status-driven world. Each of the seven chapters is a keenly observed profile of that world's highest echelons: a Christie's auction, a crit session at the California Institute of the Arts and the Art Basel art fair. The chapter on auctions (where one auction-goer explains, [I]t's dangerous to wear Prada.... You might get caught in the same outfit as three members of Christie's staff) is one of the book's strongest; the author's conversations about the role of the art critic with Artforum editor-in-chief Tim Griffin and the New Yorker's Peter Schjeldahl are edifying. Thornton offers an elegant, evocative, sardonic view into some of the art world's most prestigious institutions. 8 illus. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
With both museum attendance and the art market booming, contemporary art is not just for the elite. If you want to understand what all the buzz is about, travel with freelancer Thornton to Christie's auction house, the Venice Biennale, and more. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
New Yorker and Artforum.com contributor Thornton (Club Cultures, 1996) takes a wide-angle view of art as creation--but also as production, marketing, personality and mega-profit. Her narrative moves gracefully across international boundaries, cultures, languages and genres. After a few generic remarks about today's art world, which she deems "polycentric" (less anchored in Paris and New York), the author considers why art has become so popular. We are more educated, she avers, more global and more affluent. High prices generate media attention; media attention generates more of everything. Thornton then takes us behind the scenes at a Christie's auction where bidding for a 1963 Warhol began at $8 million dollars. She interviews an assortment of people, including artist Keith Tyson, who declares auctions to be "vulgar, in the same way that pornography is vulgar." Next, she whisks us to California for an all-day session with artist/teacher Michael Asher. He's conducting a "crit": a collective critique of students' proposals and projects. Then to Switzerland for a massive contemporary art fair, where VIPs line up outside before the opening like nervous daddies hoping to nab his kid the newest PlayStation. The author takes us into the jury room for the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery and inside the editorial offices at Artforum. Of that venerable publication, circulation about 60,000, Thornton extracts from some readers the confession that they simply look at the picture. "The Studio Visit" follows prolific Japanese artist Takashi Murakami through his three studios. The Venice Biennale gives the author a chance to catch up on her lap swimming in the Hotel Cipriani's 100-foot saltwater pool. Thornton conducted many interviews in preparation for her "days" and later admits that she sometimes employed a technique she calls "displaced nonfiction," quoting, for example, as a comment from an exhibition crowd something she actually noted in a prior (or later) phone conversation. An exhilarating guided tour of some very exclusive circles. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
