Why Does Contemporary Art Cost So Much?
Don Thompson, a teacher of marketing and economics at York University in Toronto, started studying art auctions because he didn’t quite understand how they work. “My friends ask, ‘Why is this being sold, and why at these prices?’ And I say, ‘I don’t know,’” he said. “Who determines the one-tenth of one percent of artists who get to earn money like that?” Thompson, author of The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, explained why art costs so much, what it means to brand an artist, and …
