Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art first appeared as a hardback edition in the US in 2005, when it received a scattering of short, but very favourable reviews.
Since then it has become a set text for those few art-history postgraduate courses that include an element of the art market, and a core work on those provided by the likes of the Sotheby's Institute.
This paperback edition is well worthy of perusal by anyone whose work brings them into contact with commercial art dealers - and is interesting enough as a general read to appeal to anyone interested in the mysterious workings of the art market.
Although about pricing art, it is also a revealing portrait of the way art dealers think, and the values they ascribe to art. At the heart is the inevitable tension between those who feel that the capitalist market inevitably sullies the art, and those who are frustrated by the fact that although the art market is a market, it behaves in very weird ways in comparison with, say, oil or grain.
Olav Velthuis is a journalist for the Dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant, as well as a sociology lecturer at the University of Amsterdam.
Talking Prices began as Velthuis's thesis at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, but thanks to a further scholarship from Princeton University, he was able to continue his research in the US.
This led him to expand the original research from Amsterdam, a relative backwater in the art market, to the powerhouse of New York.
He takes us on a journey that sometimes leaves him (and us) open-mouthed, and although he says, "this book is not about colourful biographical details of artists, dealers and collectors, about 'the powers behind the scenes'", there are a mass of examples and quotes that ground the academic work in a recognisable reality.
Talking Prices begins with a telling example. Velthuis describes his despair at a leading New York dealer who, in his taped interview, repeatedly evaded discussion about his pricing strategies, and instead talked about his gallery as "a family", and as a "mutually enabling environment" benefiting the arts community in general.
He was also highly critical of the boom of the 1980s, and said he only sold art to people who will "grow from it spiritually" - and implied that not only was he not going to answer the cash questions, he thought they were missing the point.
Covering his frustration, Velthuis switched off his tape and accepted the offer of a glass of wine and the chance to look at the dealer's personal collection.
Suddenly the dealer was willing to discuss the price at acquisition, current market value and "proudly emphasised that the current market value surpassed the acquisition price dramatically", as Velthuis puts it.
Much of the book deals with this essential doublethink: one the one hand, the art market is a capitalist market like any other.
To find items that are attractive and marketable to potential customers, a dealer has to price the item at a level the market will bear, promote the artists at often considerable expense, have contracts with them and generally run a profitable business - although the fact, as Velthuis notes, that most start-up galleries close within five years shows that only a small number get this right.
But on the other hand, he has to account for the fact that dealers play an important role in the cultural landscape. By the selection process of who they will support and promote and who not, they act as "gatekeepers", filtering out from the great mass of artists working today.
Taking Prices was written just before the huge art market upsurge of 2005, and presumably researched during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Nonetheless, because Velthuis has interviewed dealers in depth about the last art market boom (the late 1980s, brought to an abrupt crash in 1991/92 with the collapse of the Japanese stock market and subsequent US and European recessions), some of the discussions are strangely prescient.
By Olav Velthuis, Princeton University Press, £11.50
ISBN13: 978 0 691 13403 1
Jane Morris is a freelance arts writer and editor
Since then it has become a set text for those few art-history postgraduate courses that include an element of the art market, and a core work on those provided by the likes of the Sotheby's Institute.
This paperback edition is well worthy of perusal by anyone whose work brings them into contact with commercial art dealers - and is interesting enough as a general read to appeal to anyone interested in the mysterious workings of the art market.
Although about pricing art, it is also a revealing portrait of the way art dealers think, and the values they ascribe to art. At the heart is the inevitable tension between those who feel that the capitalist market inevitably sullies the art, and those who are frustrated by the fact that although the art market is a market, it behaves in very weird ways in comparison with, say, oil or grain.
Olav Velthuis is a journalist for the Dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant, as well as a sociology lecturer at the University of Amsterdam.
Talking Prices began as Velthuis's thesis at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, but thanks to a further scholarship from Princeton University, he was able to continue his research in the US.
This led him to expand the original research from Amsterdam, a relative backwater in the art market, to the powerhouse of New York.
He takes us on a journey that sometimes leaves him (and us) open-mouthed, and although he says, "this book is not about colourful biographical details of artists, dealers and collectors, about 'the powers behind the scenes'", there are a mass of examples and quotes that ground the academic work in a recognisable reality.
Talking Prices begins with a telling example. Velthuis describes his despair at a leading New York dealer who, in his taped interview, repeatedly evaded discussion about his pricing strategies, and instead talked about his gallery as "a family", and as a "mutually enabling environment" benefiting the arts community in general.
He was also highly critical of the boom of the 1980s, and said he only sold art to people who will "grow from it spiritually" - and implied that not only was he not going to answer the cash questions, he thought they were missing the point.
Covering his frustration, Velthuis switched off his tape and accepted the offer of a glass of wine and the chance to look at the dealer's personal collection.
Suddenly the dealer was willing to discuss the price at acquisition, current market value and "proudly emphasised that the current market value surpassed the acquisition price dramatically", as Velthuis puts it.
Much of the book deals with this essential doublethink: one the one hand, the art market is a capitalist market like any other.
To find items that are attractive and marketable to potential customers, a dealer has to price the item at a level the market will bear, promote the artists at often considerable expense, have contracts with them and generally run a profitable business - although the fact, as Velthuis notes, that most start-up galleries close within five years shows that only a small number get this right.
But on the other hand, he has to account for the fact that dealers play an important role in the cultural landscape. By the selection process of who they will support and promote and who not, they act as "gatekeepers", filtering out from the great mass of artists working today.
Taking Prices was written just before the huge art market upsurge of 2005, and presumably researched during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Nonetheless, because Velthuis has interviewed dealers in depth about the last art market boom (the late 1980s, brought to an abrupt crash in 1991/92 with the collapse of the Japanese stock market and subsequent US and European recessions), some of the discussions are strangely prescient.
By Olav Velthuis, Princeton University Press, £11.50
ISBN13: 978 0 691 13403 1
Jane Morris is a freelance arts writer and editor
