Auction 1 Collector's Library: Art books, Catalogues and Reference books
By AW Auctions
May 19, 2021
3B, 1st Lyusinovsky Lane, Moscow (Sherwood Tenement Building), Russia

More than 250 years ago, the major auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's began their history with book auctions. We decided that our first auction would also be a book auction. Oh these ambitions and plans... What of them will be realized, only time will tell.


For this auction, we have selected books from several Collectors' libraries. Some books came to us from Yekaterinburg, some from St. Petersburg, and some we found in old Moscow apartments.


We have a very special attitude to books, especially art books, as we work with them every day in attribution and fact-checking, etc. We believe that "book therapy" can help to recover the strength.


We look forward to seeing you at our book auction!  


All books can be export from Russia. Please send us an email if you have any questions re Shipping from Russia.


Please note that the date is postponed to May, 19 2021


More details
The auction has ended

LOT 273:

[Russian Edition] The $12 Million Stuffed Shark. The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art and Auction Houses

Sold for: 220p
Start price:
100 p
Estimated price :
500p - 700p
Buyer's Premium: 15% More details
tags: Books

[Russian Edition] The $12 Million Stuffed Shark. The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art and Auction Houses
Moscow, Centrepoligraf, 2017
382 pp., illustrations, 14 by 20.5 cm
In Publisher's hardcover in excellent condition.

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.

Russian Edition.