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A Short History of the Modern Art Market uses the lens of the artist to introduce readers to the history of the art market. It asks how artists have produced, exhibited and sold their works from the 17th century to today. Crucially, it helps artists and all those engaged in the art world to understand the past as a way of navigating the present.
Academic accounts of the history of the art market have mainly focused on specific time periods or geographic areas and tend to conflate primary and secondary markets. This book strives to be different. By transferring a simple supply-and-demand model of production, dissemination and consumption into the key thread of the argument, it enables readers to follow the development of the art market from the perspective of the artist, the artist's agents and distributors, and ultimately that of the collector, with stories of artists and artworks bringing these processes to life.
The book focuses on artists from the Early Modern world to the present day, beginning with the organisation of workshop production and booming global trade, through the consolidation of art-world institutions in European cities, the marketing of national schools within 19th-century capitalism, the circulation of the avant-gardes, and the craze for contemporary art in New York post-World War II, ending with global artist superstars such as Jeff Koons and the Beeple NFT-hype of the early 2020s. Short 'spotlight' texts cover themes such as art across empires, women as entrepreneurs and market mediators, world's fairs, and the underground art scene in 1960s New York.
Stephanie Dieckvoss is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the Courtauld Institute, University of London. Her research examines contemporary art markets with a particular focus on emerging and alternative market models, institutional dynamics, spatial enquiries, and the evolving relationships between art and commerce. She has over 15 years' experience of working in commercial art galleries and art fairs in Germany, France and the US and is the art-market correspondent for the German financial newspaper Handelsblatt. Tom Stammers is Reader in Art and Cultural History at the Courtauld Institute, University of London. He is a cultural historian of modern France and modern Europe who has published widely on the history of collecting, the art market, museums, connoisseurship, the historiography of art and the material legacies of the French Revolution. Tom and Stephanie are Co-Convenors of the Master's Programme in Art and Business at the Courtauld Institute, University of London.
Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Early Modern Entrepreneurship: Artists, Patrons and Agents in the 17th Century; Spotlight: Artists Across Empires and Global Trade Routes; 2. A Clubbable World: Art in the 18th-Century Metropolis; Spotlight: Women Artists and Entrepreneurs; 3. A Multi-Polar Model: Nationalism and Internationalism in 19th-Century Art Worlds; Spotlight: Exoticism and Exhibitionism at the World's Fairs; 4. A Time of Crisis: The Avant-Gardes and their Enemies in the Early 20th Century; Spotlight: Collecting, Curating and Selling 'Tribal' Art; 5. A Brave New World: New York and the Post-War Art Market; Spotlight: The Black Art Scene in New York; 6. Contemporary Art Rules the World: 1980s to 2000; Spotlight: The AIDS Crisis and the Art Market; 7. 21st Century: Globalisation and its Discontent; Spotlight: The Short-Lived NFT Bubble; Conclusion; Notes; Further Reading; Index