I highly recommend Boom if you're interested this history of art and what drives the market, arts political context. Boom focuses more on the mega's and the gr

I highly recommend Boom if you're interested this history of art and what drives the market, arts political context. Boom focuses more on the mega's and the gross borderline (outright) fraud, sales practices, & value pumping schemes. The book in this review seems like it might delve deeper in the cultural and political drivers which would be cool to learn more about. Important to ground the context of contemporary art in politics as a heuristic or opposition to 'soviet-style communist' culture and growing cuter-culture. Really interesting stories for instance the CIA & MOMA [1] [2]. There's also a history of large business being one of the first to build collections of contemporary art. And of course for profit galleries making kings. What is art now that a photo can perfectly reproduce a scene. This review has this great quote "As if on cue, one did.” (This was Sartre in 1945, when the Nazi occupation ended and he delivered a philosophy of freedom that “turned France’s wartime experience into a metaphor.”)" As a collector myself who can't afford more than works on paper (from established artists at least) I can't even get a reply to buy something theoretically in my budget for a lot of artists i love. PACE etc will only sell these 'lesser works' if you buy a ton of other art, prop up their less popular artists, have a top level connection. Even Nina Chanel Abney posted on her insta getting the classic 'who is in your collection' reply ;) she replied i have the largest collection of Nina Chanel!! We're not even worthy of knowing the price of pieces on that PDF. [1] https://daily.jstor.org/was-modern-art-really-a-cia-psy-op/ https://daily.jstor.org/was-modern-art-really-a-cia-psy-op/ [2] https://hyperallergic.com/294142/a-visit-to-the-the-cias-secret-abstract-art-collection/ https://hyperallergic.com/294142/a-visit-to-the-the-cias-sec...