Short Synopsis
From Sarah Thornton comes this fly-on-the-wall account of the smart and strange subcultures that make, trade, curate, collect, and hype contemporary art.

Full Synopsis
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 Artforum magazine, 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.

"Thornton offers an elegant, evocative, sardonic view into some of the art world's most prestigious institutions." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review

"An exhilarating guided tour of some very exclusive circles." ---Kirkus

"Thornton's uniquely clarifying dispatches from the art front glimmer with high-definition profiles of artists, dealers, critics, and collectors, and grapple with the paradoxes inherent in the transformation of creativity into commodity." ---Booklist Starred Review

"Gilbert keeps the listener's attention as she adeptly delivers the sly humor and sense of wonder." ---AudioFile

Publishers Weekly Review

Booklist Review