7 Days in the Art World is a great insiders look into the art world every artist and art afficionado that doesn’t have access to millions of dollars nor entrance to the best of the best will love to read. It offers a guide to what is really happening at the top levels of the contemporary art world. Sarah Thornton does a brilliant job navigating readers through auction houses, galleries, behind the scenes looks at artists themselves and the masters programs that are seemingly becoming requirements for young artists to create a name for themselves. Thornton writes from a sociological perspective, freeing the book from artistic pretension. I bought it and finished it a couple days later – a real page turner, I highly recommend adding this to your summer reading list.
Publisher Comments:
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 Artforummagazine, 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.
Buy it from an independent bookstore!
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