Stuffed Sharks
and Stuffed Shirts

A review of The $12 Million Stuffed Shark.
by Don Thompson, Arum Press, 2008. 290 pp.

February 18, 2008

Apologists for inequality have, over the years, always loved to trot out fine art as a justification for the existence of grand private fortunes.

“The arts have always depended,” as a Financial Times commentator mused last week, “on the benefaction of the super-rich. There would be no Sistine Chapel without the super-rich papacy; no Mozart operas without the super-rich Viennese court.”

And what of high culture today? Do our modern super-rich deserve kudos for keeping our society’s cultural flame burning bright?

In 2006, economist Don Thompson set out on a “year-long journey of discovery” to find the answer. Deep into the New York and London art world he went, to quiz art dealers and auction house executives, to talk shop with art collectors and artists themselves.

In the end, as this entertaining new book relates, Thompson found precious little culture, but plenty of raw, naked, greedy, silly commerce. He discovered “a competitive high-stakes game, fueled by great amounts of money and ego” where the “value of one work of art compared to another is in no way related to the time or skill that went into producing it, or even whether anyone else considers it to be great art.”

Thompson’s title refers to the 15-foot tiger shark that superstar British artist Damien Hurst had mounted as an artwork in 1991. Fourteen years later, a New York hedge fund major domo bought Hurst’s shark for $12 million, at the time “more money than had ever been paid for a work by a living artist.”

The 43-year-old Hurst has become a living symbol of the vast rewards now available at the art world’s summit. His personal fortune passed the £100 million mark — about $200 million — three years ago. By way of comparison, the famed Francis Bacon, the finest British artist of modern times, died in 1992, at the age of 82, with an estate worth only £11 million.

What accounts for Hurst’s stunning fortune? Our global economy, Thompson notes, is simply generating many more super-rich. The number of wealthy art collectors has, since the early 1990s, multiplied 20 times over — and so have artwork prices. Over one six-month period in 2006, four paintings sold for over $100 million each.

Should we be bothered by any of this? We certainly should — if we value the role art can and should play in a truly cultured society. The tilt of the world’s wealth toward the top is distorting and damaging the art world every bit as much as the rest of modern life.

With so many super-rich collectors chasing so few art masterworks, Thompson explains, “both museums and private collectors face a ‘last chance’ situation every time a major work comes up for sale.”

“Fearing they may never have another opportunity to add a certain artist or period to their collection,” he continues, “they purchase without consideration of past prices.”

The resulting super-high price-tags have consequences. Museums, once free and easily accessible to all, have become costly destinations off-limits to average families. And young people with art talent, dazzled by the fortunes of artists like Damien Hurst, waste years off their lives walking the streets of New York and London, desperately searching for art galleries willing to sing their praises.

Thompson, who has taught at Harvard and the London School of Economics, estimates that 30,000 young artists now find themselves struggling to get a gallery to represent them, with that number increasing each year “as publicity given to the high prices paid by contemporary art attracts more young artists to the profession, and those already seeking gallery representation spend longer before dropping out.”

In a society that truly valued art and culture, all these young talents wouldn’t be pounding the pavement. Many might be making a real contribution to the arts, by, for instance, teaching art — and an appreciation for it — in elementary and secondary schools. Instead, in school districts across the United States, art has become a disposable frill in tight-budget times.

Super-rich who shell out millions for stuffed sharks. Schools that can’t afford to teach art. Not a pretty picture. But an inevitable one. In art as in life, we only ask for trouble when we let intense concentrations of wealth call our society’s shots.

— Sam Pizzigati

Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the weekly online newsletter on excess and inequality.