Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock’s drip painting No. 5, 1948 sell for $140 million? 
 Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.
 This book is the first to look at the economics and the marketing strategies that enable the modern art market to generate such astronomical prices. Drawing on interviews with both past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a journey of discovery through the peculiar world of modern art. Surprising, passionate, gossipy, revelatory, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark reveals a great deal that even experienced auction purchasers do not know.

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

Arts & Photography

Thompson, Don

History & Criticism

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock's drip painting No. 5, 1948 sell for $140 million? 
Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.
This book is the first to look at the economics and the marketing strategies that enable the modern art market to generate such astronomical prices. Drawing on interviews with past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a journey of discovery through the peculiar world of modern art. Surprising, passionate, gossipy, revelatory, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark reveals a great deal that even experienced auction purchasers do not know.

St. Martin's: Griffin

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark delves into the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world – artists, dealers, auction houses, and wealthy collectors. If it’s true – as so often said – that 85 percent of new contemporary art is bad, why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? The $12 Million Stuffed Shark explores money, lust, and the self-aggrandizement of possession in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work of art valuable while others are ignored. In the style of the bestselling Freakonomics, Thompson uses economic concepts to explain the unique practices employed, to great success, in the international contemporary art market. He discusses branding and marketing and how various strategies are tailored to a wealthy clientele, driving a "must-have" culture. Drawing on exclusive interviews with both past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a surprising journey of discovery.

Doubleday, Canada

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark delves into the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world – artists, dealers, auction houses, and wealthy collectors. If it’s true – as so often said – that 85 percent of new contemporary art is bad, why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? The $12 Million Stuffed Shark explores money, lust, and the self-aggrandizement of possession in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work of art valuable while others are ignored. In the style of the bestselling Freakonomics, Thompson uses economic concepts to explain the unique practices employed, to great success, in the international contemporary art market. He discusses branding and marketing and how various strategies are tailored to a wealthy clientele, driving a "must-have" culture. Drawing on exclusive interviews with both past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a surprising journey of discovery. From the Hardcover edition.

Anchor Canada

If there was an official poet laureate of the West, Don Thompson would be my choice. For four decades he has reminded us what it means to be alive out here, coping with a world we do not fully understand. In Local Color, he employs an original format to present, as usual, wonderful word-pictures. Also as usual, “place” is a character in his work, but not just any place: the south San Joaquin with all its peculiarities and wonders. No writer has seen more there or told more telling tales as a result. This is narrative poetry that really narrates!  —Gerald Haslam, author of Straight White Male and Leon Patterson: a California Story

Local Color

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Aldrich Press

Comics Buyer's Guide 1992 Annual

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Antiques & Collectibles

Krause+publications

Comics Buyer's Guide, 1993 Annual: The Standard Reference for Today's Collector

Comics Buyers Guide

Comics Buyers Guide Marvel Comics Checklist & Price Guide: 1961 To Present

Krause Pubns Inc

The comic-book book

Rainbow Books

In the fragmented, diverse world of modern academia, the universal truths have been boiled down into unfathomable, specialized texts no one understands. There are no longer philosophers, but specialists who dissect the works of others until whatever truth they once held is dead. Buton Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist monk who fled from Chinese oppression in the 1950s, bursts in on the cozy academic environment of Thomas Walsh, Norman Levi, and Trish Taylor, members of the "cultural elite" at Yale. All well-known professors, all likable, all politically correct, all miserable. Rinpoche stalks the trio like a tiger. Indeed, he may be a tiger, given that he is a dying breed of living and walking philosophy, a person who literally embodies what he believes, and doesn't just write about it in obscure texts or bandy about his ideas over wine and cheese. Rinpoche's whimsical, passionate, and often hilarious rantings at the professors result in a series of dialogues that reveal to them their innermost selves: their fears, their shallowness, their depth, their humanity. Rinpoche strips them down -- particularly Walsh -- to the bare essentials of what they are. What they see as a result is that they are not the enlightened teachers they profess to be, but rather frightened children with inflated ideas copied from great minds -- professional pundits more concerned with book profits and tenure than truth. Rinpoche stands as a reminder to the professors. Not so much that he represents a culture, country or religion, but rather a state of mind that is uncompromising in its quest for the excellence of every single moment, even if the moment is banal. A state of mind represented by the ideal of Tibet, and one that underscores the tragedy of the country's genocidal destruction by the Chinese government.

Tibet Does Not Exist

Dramas & Plays

Theater for Human Rights

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