The interplay between the commercial and critical wings of contemporary art are at the centre of this persuasive account by Isabelle Graw, who as editor of the art magazine Texte zur Kunst is herself an influential player in the scene she analyses. The relationship between art and the market comes across in the book as one of uneasy symbiosis, in which mutual attraction and repulsion coexist, a situation which the author characterises as a ‘dialectical unity of opposites.’  High Price: Art Between the Market and Celebrity Culture distinguishes itself both from the ranks of practical guidebooks to contemporary collecting and from the sensational exposés of jet-set art-world lifestyles that proliferated during the last art boom, through its higher brow intention to submit the art market to critical and social analysis. Among the many issues considered in this study are the effects of celebrity culture on artists and collectors, the role of critics and art historians in the mechanisms of the art market, and the wider forces at work in the ongoing transformation of contemporary art.       

The book lays ultimate responsibility for the dramatic changes wrought on the art world in the last decade at the door of ‘cognitive capitalism’. The artist as ‘creative non-conformist’ has turned out - à la Boltanski and Chiapello - to be the ideal role model for the ‘entrepreneurial self’, in a world in which everyone is expected to be as mobile, flexible and creative as possible. Consequently, the effects of an intrusive ‘market imperialism’ are particularly pronounced in the art world, from the dominance of super-collectors with private jets, who care more about celebrity status and financial speculation than ‘engaging directly with artists and intellectuals’, to the lamentable phenomenon of ‘art fair art’, made to order for the gallery booths that are displacing the solo show as the primary interface between art and the market. The ‘opportunist behaviour’ of artists and galleries in trying to turn this state of affairs to their advantage is fittingly characterised by the author as a ‘proto-type of Paulo Virno’s post-Fordist situation.’

The tremors sent through the art world by the financial crisis of 2008 were, as the book vividly recounts, typically met with brazen self-serving rhetoric by market players. The most common tactic was to reframe the collapse of the art market as a long-awaited opportunity to separate the wheat from the chafe and allow the market to self-regulate. A reported 80% drop in turnover brought a chorus of comments from gallerists and dealers that actually the crisis was ‘good for art’, as it would bring a return to ‘content’ and ‘seriousness.’ Somewhat surprisingly, it also turns out that the special qualities of artworks as commodities may insulate them from the economic downturn.  While conceptual art’s attempts to resist commodification through dematerialisation failed since ‘even the most immaterial artworks have a material dimension’, contemporary artworks continue to possess qualities of ‘uniqueness’ and ‘durability’, and retain a ‘materiality’ not dissimilar to gold, which differentiates them from the ‘immaterial assets’ traded on the financial markets.

Unusually for the literature on the art market, High Price goes beyond the usual division of the commercial scene into a primary segment of artists and galleries and a secondary market made up of dealers and auction houses, to offer a ‘multi-dimensional’ analysis. In addition to the commercial art market, the book identifies a ‘knowledge market’, consisting of conferences and academic research, a ‘market of institutions’, dominated by museums and major spaces, and a ‘market of major exhibitions’, such as international biennials. This is an important insight, especially when the numerous crossovers and blurring of boundaries between these overlapping ‘parallel universes’ is taken into account. Graw comments on the ‘astonishing purposefulness’ with which the commercial art market steers a course towards these other markets, especially those associated with notions of ‘knowledge’, ‘critique’ or ‘resistance’. The question of the ultimate direction of influence and division of power between the various market segments that she identifies remains open.

Mercifully perhaps, the author of High Price does not appear to share the disparaging opinion of critics and art historians espoused by Sarah Thornton in Seven Days in the Art World, who quipped that a collector could obtain ‘a unique art historian for an entire year’ for the price of a multiple by a mid-ranking German photographer. By contrast, Graw claims that the skills of critics and art historians are ‘in extraordinary high demand’ from the art market, which requires their services in writing catalogue texts and speaking at symposia. She highlights the regular discussion events at Frieze Art Fair and Art Basel Miami Beach as a case in point, where critics serve as ‘purveyors of credibility’ because they ‘produce the kind of significance that underpins market value.’ Incidentally, such tactics are to be pushed to their semi-ironic limits at this year’s Vienna Art Fair, with plans for a Vienna School of Collecting Theory at which artists cook lunch for collectors in the VIP lounge, while theoreticians and art historians entertain them with intelligent conversation.

The blueprint for the modern-day celebrity was formed from the ‘figure of the artist as an exceptional being’, and Graw makes the additional point that stars of the art world have the edge over other kinds of celebrity, because their fame is based on ‘product’ and not just ‘personality’. High Price finds the perfect example of the intertwining of art and celebrity in Andy Warhol, whose career revolved around the fraught relationship between product and person, as well as between conformity and resistance to the market. The significance of celebrity for contemporary art may however be a little overstated, especially if the net is widened to consider artists operating beyond the circuit of the top-end art market. The diversification of the art world away from traditional centres towards artists and collectors in China or the Middle East has accelerated in the wake of financial crisis in the West, making it also increasingly hard to sustain the view that ‘a truly global art market is an illusion’. It may well be that after the financial crash of 2008 it was not just the art boom that took a hit, but celebrity culture itself that started to unravel, with implications for both the art market and its critics.

Maja and Reuben Fowkes

Isabelle Graw, High Price, 2010 (detail of cover image)