Customer Reviews

The Art Dealers, Revised & Expanded: The Powers Behind the Scene Tell How the Art World Really Works

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This is a mere formulaic padding of the prior edition of this book. There are a few new chapters. In some cases, these chapters address dealers who have come into prominence since the 1985 edition. Other dealers given equal attention were added for reasons that shall remain mysterious, as they address players never known or soon to be forgotten. The original chapters related to figures such as Sydney Janis and Leo Castelli have some historical interest. The new chapters tend to be shorter and tend to suffer from a narrow focus on the personal background of the dealer and the editors' apparent effort to prompt the dealers to speak to art world issues that may have been new or compelling in 1985 (e.g., the "new" role of auction houses) but which are certainly capillary today. The upshot is that I learned quite literally nothing about the contemporary art market.

This book sheds real light into how New York based art dealers from the 1940s to the 1980s lived, worked and thought about art. There are many interesting anecdotes, opinions and brief biographies inside this book filled with short essays about some 25 dealers who hepled shape the world of art as it is still known today.

Must read for artists who are serious about their career, marketing and gaining knowledge about the history of art dealers and galleries. This book is a lead in to other written material available.