Breakfast at Sotheby's - Phillip Hook (Overlook Press, 2014)

A witty look at the modern art market.  The book is formatted as a brief lexicography with entries on aspects of art presentation, history, and anecdotes.  From fakes and forgeries to the personal lives of artists, this book always leads to how the price of an art work is affected.  [707.5]

Phillip Hook served as a director at both Christie's and at Sotheby's.  From these experiences, he draws insights into the functioning of the art market as a response to aspects of the works that make each one more or less desirable. 

Although this book and the classic The Economics of Taste, which covered the variations of the art market from 1760 to 1960, each provide some analysis of the art market, the similarity ends there.  The approach taken by Hook is not an updated analysis of statistics of sales records by artist.  Hook instead presents a lexicon of key terms and names in five areas: the artist, subject and style, wall power, provenance, and market weather.  Within these categories, he presents brief essays on individual artists (such as Géricault or Breughel) which may deal with their biography, but also attempts to identify periods or subjects of the most auction  appeal, or he addresses concepts (such as Branding or Color) to note how it affects the salability of artists' works.

The book is a rich store of anecdotes, many from the author's own experiences (and mistakes), to illustrate the peculiarities of the market for art; that is, a market in which every item may be unique, a market which is driven by forces that defy analysis: status, emotions, and fleeting opportunities, and a market distorted by frequent rent-seeking behavior by some investors.  Along the way, the reader is introduced to factors that drive art prices.  One learns that blue skies over sunny landscapes with bright colors sell positively.  Hence, the Impressionists continue to enjoy a strong market.  The right frame becomes important, even though it isn't a fixed aspect of the work itself.  The public generally dislikes rain, muddy colors (even those of van Gogh's early work), religious themes, especially martyrdoms, and war.  Even individual artists' work may be affected by some non-aesthetic concerns: is it a Mondrian with any red in it? is it a Chagall with a blue background?

This book is recommended as a refreshing break from issues of policy or from quantitative analysis and offers a reason to rethink what economic behavior encompasses.