Edward Behrens

Peering into the Shark Tank

Dark Side of the Boom: The Excesses of the Art Market in the Twenty-first Century

By

Lund Humphries 232pp £19.99 order from our bookshop

The art market stinks to high hell and in Dark Side of the Boom Georgina Adam, one of the finest analysts of its machinations, has taken on the challenge of being a Virgil to guide us through the circles of this underworld, a place of shadows, deals and greed. One might at least expect it to be well decorated, but when the artists Adam refers to merely, for instance, produce giant Xs printed onto canvas by an Epson Stylus Pro, even that redemption seems out of reach.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'It would be nice to think that women will achieve equal pay in my lifetime, rather than to watch gloomily as stati… ,
    • In 1660, two of the signatories of King Charles I's death warrant fled across the Atlantic to New England. But were… ,
    • Howard Jacobson's sixteenth novel is 'a love story of sorts, one characterised not by physical desire or even conta… ,
    • 'The sudden immersion in the new and unfamiliar can lead people to write with a rare lack of self-consciousness' P… ,
    • 'Pools bend the rules. Clothes slip off, skin glistens, consciousness heightens. A dreamlike scenario unfolds' Jam… ,
    • 'Although he surely didn’t know W H Auden’s theory that every high C proclaims human freedom and our capacity to tr… ,
    • RT : With beginning tomorrow, we've uncovered a 1997 article from the archive reviewing 'Golf Dream… ,
    Follow Us