This is the first book to investigate the modern London art market, establishing the central importance of London for the development of the modern retail market in fine art.Leading experts track the emergence and development of the structures and practices that have come to characterize the commercial art system, including the commercial art gallery, the professional dealer, the exhibition cycle and its accompanying rhetoric of press coverage and publicity, and an international network for the circulation of goods.This new commercial system involved a massive transformation of the experience of viewing art; of the relationships between artists, dealers, collectors, art objects, and audiences; and of the very criteria of aesthetic value itself. Its history is thus a vital part of the history of modern art, and this anthology will be of interest to art historians as well as scholars of Victorian Studies, Museum Studies, and Social History.

This book gives a comprehensive account of the history and underlying economics of the modern art market in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.

The 19th century in France witnessed the emergence of the structures of the modern art market that remain until this day. This book examines the relationship between the avant-garde Barbizon landscape painter, Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), and this market, exploring the constellation of patrons, art dealers and critics who surrounded the artist. It argues for the pioneering role of Rousseau, his patrons and his public in the origins of the modern art market, and, in so doing, shifts attention away from the more traditional focus on the novel careers of the Impressionists and their supporters. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book provides new insight into the role of the modern artist as professional. It provides a new understanding of the complex iconographical and formal choices within Rousseau's work, rediscovering the original radical charge that once surrounded the artist's work and led to extensive and peculiarly modern tensions with the market place.

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. They can make and break careers and fortunes. 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. 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. Dealers operate within a private world of handshake agreements, negotiating for the highest commissions. Michael Shnayerson, a longtime contributing editor to Vanity Fair, writes the first ever definitive history of their activities. 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. 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. Now, dealers and auctioneers are seeking the first billion-dollar painting. It hasn't happened yet, but they are confident they can push the price there soon.

A behind-the-scenes look at a century of high art and high-stakes commerce, fluently narrated and spiced with backstage gossip. This captivating history brings to life the connoisseurs and market makers, artists and swindlers who have shaped our tastes and driven the price of masterpieces into the stratosphere. Photographs, caricatures, and pictures of famous paintings.

This study of the ways in which Flemish painting between 1550 and 1650 reflected the burgeoning capitalism of Antwerp, focuses not only on the market-scene paintings, but also on the interaction between painters and markets as it was influenced by merchants, governments and consumers.

The book examines the contemporary art system with a broad and systematic approach, through the application of models of microeconomics and industrial organizations. By breaking down the traditional barriers between different academic disciplines such as art and economics, this book offers a unique opportunity to grasp the complexities of the contemporary art world and provides the tools to conduct a structural analysis of that market. The result is an in-depth analysis of the contemporary art market from an interdisciplinary perspective. While it is not a textbook in the strictest sense, the book offers a concise and effective overview of all actors in the art system, and provides supporting data and valuable information, both conceptual and practical. It is therefore a text that can be used by students wishing to better understand the complex dynamics that govern the contemporary art market, but also by cultural managers, collectors, potential art investors or simply art lovers who need a quick reference.​