The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art – A Review

stuffedIn contemporary art, there are many questions to be raised as to why works sell and more strangely, how much they sell for. With each new movement, there are a series of new questions brought to the table – is this art? What will people pay to own it? Is there a place for it?

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art takes an in depth approach to such questions that are raised daily within the art world. Drawing on psychology and the economics of the contemporary art world, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark brings to light the flat out insane prices and lengths that people will go to to own the next “big deal.”

Pollock

When Jackson Pollock, for example, was emerging as the face of abstract expressionism, he was doing so at a time where form and training defined art. Had it not been for the help of Peggy Guggenheim and his wife, Lee Krasner, Pollock’s work would have continued to be overlooked. So, why, under what circumstance does his work now sell for a cool $140 million? Answer – A major contemporary art world figure head deemed it worthy. It is just one side of the psychology of the art world and how it feeds the art market’s economic makeup.

Damien Hirst

Following the same sort of mindset, Hirst paid to have the shark caught and then had the two ton carcus taxidermied and mounted, titled it The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living and set a $12 million dollar price tag. It didn’t sell, largely in part because of the weight of the piece, but also because unlike Pollock, no art world big-wig proclaimed it as the next big movement. It was eventually purchased by a wealthy investor after much controversy.

A Question Raised

By covering these types of controversial pieces and their buyers, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art makes the reader focus on questions that have plagued the art world, society and the individual ever since the Venus of Willendorf and those questions often have only personal answers. After all, what is art? What defines a creation as a work of art? Who needs to say it is art before it can seriously be considered as such?

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson is available for purchase through Palgrave Macmillan with ISBN 0230610226.

 

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Intimations of Paradise – Book Review

paradiseChristopher Burkett is a landscape photographer with over 25 years of experience. He has worked in print and was also briefly, a Brother in a religious order, before he turned to his passion of photography. All of his exhibition prints are personally printed by him. His ability to capture light and color in his work make for breathtaking photographs that give the viewer a more intense view of nature, as seen through our ever-changing landscape.

According to the artist’s website, “Christopher Burkett crafted this retrospective volume with the same care and precision expressed in his photographs. The book’s 180 pages include 73 plates and four essays. Each book ordered directly from Christopher Burkett will be hand signed.” Each plate that Burkett included is a solid, bold representation of the artist’s large body of work. It is a fabulous gift for Burkett fans or nature enthusiasts as a whole.

The Photography of Christopher Burkett

In Imitations of Paradise, Burkett includes many photographs that span his impressive 25 year career. The reprints of his work are bold and vibrant, giving the viewer a clear impression of what it is like to stand before a gallery print of Burkett’s work.

Burkett is known for the color seen in his work. He has been called one of the best color photographers of his time– something that is not easy to attain. Photographing in color is much harder than in black and white because light changes color and thus, photographers must learn different angles, maneuvers and techniques in order to capture the photograph and the color just right.

Buying a Burkett

Christopher Burkett’s work is available for purchase all over the United States, including New York, California and Colorado. A list of galleries that sell Burkett’s work is available on his website. Depending on what print and the size of it, prices for Christopher Burkett’s work range from $1,000 to over $10,000 USD.

For fans of Burkett who do not have a spare grand laying around, Burkett also sells posters and books of his work like Imitations of Paradise. Posters are about $30 USD and his books range in price, but are usually under $100 USD.

Overall, Christopher Burkett’s Imitations of Paradise lives up to the high standards that he holds for his work. As he states on his site, [he and his wife] “self published this book to ensure the highest quality reproduction possible.The separations are scanned from original prints, and after two years of work, are ‘as close as you can get with ink and paper’ to the original photographs.”

Imitations of Paradise by Christopher Burkett was first published by West Winds Art, Inc. on June 1, 1999 with ISBN 978-0967021607. It is available for purchase on the artist’s website.

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Locals Only: California Skateboarding 1975-1978 – Book Review

skateThe world of skateboarding is something that many kids from the late 1980’s and up until present day are at least some what associated with. Skating celebrities like Tony Hawk have mainstreamed the sport, turning it into video games and entertainment. However, skateboarding did not begin with the 80’s or even with the grunge movement of the early 1990’s. Skateboarding has been around since the 1950’s.

A Brief History of Skateboarding

Skateboarding began in the 1950’s when surfing was at its peak. People soon realized that a skateboard gave them the same feel as surfing. Skateboarding then slowly grew over the decade and by 1959, first Roller Derby Skateboard was for sale.

By the 1960’s, skateboards had entered mass production. Many stores were carrying them and the sport was quickly becoming a new fad. However, just as with any new sport, safety concerns soon began and people began speaking out against skateboarding, urging parents not to buy their children skateboards. The fad quickly died out, almost as fast as it began.

On Locals Only: California Skateboarding 1975-1978

When the 1970’s hit, so did the next big skating boom. The way skateboards were made changed and skate-parks began popping up all over the continental United States. The boards themselves were being made wider, offering skaters more stability especially on vertical surfaces.

Photographer, Hugh Holland, though not a skater himself, began to document these skateboarders in Los Angeles, parts of the San Fernando Valley, Venice Beach, San Francisco and Baja California, Mexico. It was also during this time, that Southern California was experiencing a serious drought which left much of the areas pools emptied for rebellious skaters to break into and use to hone their skills.

Holland documented all of this for three years, capturing the very beginnings of what would become a huge sport in the late 1990s and well into the new millennium. Holland’s photographs have that great dated feel to them and really makes the collection look authentic and more interesting than other collections that were captured on a digital camera as opposed to film.

Adding to that, the fonts chosen and the overall attitude of the collection, makes the reader feel part of and immersed in what Hugh Holland was documenting over thirty years ago. Overall, Holland captured a moment in time that might have gone otherwise overlooked. His collection is interesting and fun to look at and read through.

Locals Only: California Skateboarding 1975-1978 by Hugh Holland and Steve Crist was first published on October 1, 2010 by AMMO Books with ISBN 9781934429471.

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Book Review: The Swan Thieves

Elizabeth Kostovaswans was first published in 2005 with her best-selling historical vampire thriller, The Historian. Today, there are more than 1.5 million copies in print and a Sony film adaptation is in the works. Much like that novel, Kostova sets up The Swan of Thieves.

The Artist and the Academic

Here, Kostova creates a central, academic hero that becomes engrossed within a mystery. Each chapter ranges in time from past to present, encompassing the lives of painters Beatrice de Clerval and her uncle Olivier Vignot, whose lives are beautifully described and played out through their art and letters.

Juxtaposing the past with the present, Kostova creates her academic hero in Andrew Marlow, a trained psychiatrist who is bent on asking the tough, prying questions and unraveling the mystery that is key to the plot of the novel. The mystery being that one of Marlow’s patients, renowned painter Robert Oliver, tried to slash a painting in the National Gallery. Marlow becomes increasingly obsessed with Oliver and his reasons for attempting to do what he did, when he uncovers Oliver’s obsession with a stolen batch of letters written in French that he continually reads and obsesses over himself.

Living Up to The Historian

Fans of Kostova have waited with great anticipation for her next novel. Fans of The Historian will not be disappointed by The Swan Thieves, in fact, it is rather easy to see much of Kostova’s budding writing style continue on into her latest novel.

The intrigue and ability to build a deep and entangled plot is clearly evident in Kostova’s second novel. Accompanied with the lush world of Impressionism and 19th century life, Kostova delivers with The Swan Thieves: A Novel. Kostova has a great gift for writing. It will be a long wait to see what her third novel will bring to her already impressive quality of work.

About the Author – Elizabeth Kostova

Kostova was born New London, Connecticut and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee where she graduated from the Webb School of Knoxville. She went on to complete her undergraduate degree from Yale University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan.

According to a press release, in May 2007, the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation was created to help support Bulgarian creative writing, the translation of contemporary Bulgarian literature into English, and friendship between Bulgarian authors and American and British authors.

The Swan Thieves: A Novel by Elizabeth Kostova was published by Little, Brown and Company on January 12, 2010 with ISBN 0316065781.

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