The best books on understanding the crazy world of contemporary art

The staggering thing about contemporary art is the money involved. Why would anyone pay $12 million for a dead shark preserved in formaldehyde?

This question drives Don Thompson’s book, as he explores the contemporary art market from the point of view of a professional economist. It’s a relatively unbiased work, free of ridicule or outrage, and is perhaps the better for that. Thompson shows us how the market works, and the role of each player – the buyers and collectors and investors, the rock star artists, the museums and galleries and auction houses – but also explores the psychology at work.

Why did hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen buy Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living for $12 million?

Where Thompson concentrates on the economic aspects of the art market, Thornton takes a sociological perspective.

She is like an anthropologist exploring a strange culture, and in the best participative tradition, takes pains to understand it non-judgementally, on its own terms.

The seven days refer to seven distinct events that make up the ecosystem of the contemporary art world: the auction house where pieces are sold, the university where artists learn their craft, the fair where collectors find new talent, the prize that spotlights tomorrow’s stars, the magazine that critiques and identifies the latest trends, the studio where the artist works, and the exhibition where the triumphant art is displayed and celebrated.

If Thompson’s book is about the finance of art, this is about people.

Before you judge contemporary art, it’s only fair that you try to understand it.

As such, Susie Hodges’ book does a valuable service, collecting together one hundred of the most important, influential, and controversial artworks from the last century or so. This ranges from Picasso to Damien Hirst, from Andy Warhol’s silkscreen prints of tins of tomato soup to Tracy Emin’s unmade bed.

Each entry gives some background to the work, some critical analysis, and attempts to justify why, although your five-year-old might indeed leave their bed unmade, they could not have done so in a way that explores the poignancy of the human condition (or something like that…).

A partisan book, defending the importance of modern art, but an informative introduction.

This classic text juxtaposes contemporary popular media with well-known works of art, and in doing so lays bare the hidden, timeless motives behind art production and collecting.

The book combines short articles with photo “essays”, and it’s actually the images that supply the most convincing argument. To see a Playboy centrefold alongside a nude by Ingres, or a food advert next to a still life by a Dutch master, forcefully illustrates Berger’s central point: that art is, and always has been, tied closely to commerce, commodification, and possession.

In short, art sells things – whether experiences, pleasures, values, or a particular sense of self or way of life. As such, it is a servant of those who have the power and wealth to possess these things.

The shortest book on the list – I wish it were longer! – is the hardest hitting.

Julian Spalding, art critic, and former gallery and museum curator, is well qualified to critique contemporary art trends. But the “con” of the title also stands for “conceptual” (requiring only ideas and little skill or craft), and the “con” or scam that he believes much conceptual art to be.

Spalding has no problem with “modern” or progressive art that challenges the status quo – Picasso, Magritte, or David Hockney – but only the intellectual bankruptcy that the conceptual movement has ushered in.

His forthright take is controversial, but its feisty, informed, and well-argued critique suggests that the little boy pointing out the emperor’s lack of clothes may just have a point.