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An A-Z of the Art World
by Philip Hook
When you stand in front of a work of art in a museum or exhibition, the first two questions you normally ask yourself are 1) Do I like it? and 2) Who's it by? When you stand in front of a work of art in an auction room or dealer's gallery, you ask these two questions followed by others: How much is it worth? How much will it be worth in five or ten years' time? And what will people think of me if they see it hanging on my wall?
Breakfast at Sotheby's is an alphabetical guide to how people reach answers to such questions, and how in the process art is given a financial value. Based on Philip Hook's thirty-five years' experience of the art market, Breakfast at Sotheby's explores the artist and his hinterland (including definitions for -isms, middle-brow artists, Gericault, and suicides), subject and style (from abstract art and banality through surrealism and war), "wall-power," provenance, and market weather.
Comic, revealing, piquant, splendid, and occasionally absurd, Breakfast at Sotheby's is a book of pleasure and intelligent observation, as engaged with art as it is with the world that surrounds it.
"Starred Review. A winner. Readers will learn more about the modern art market in this simple book than in any college course." - Kirkus
"A witty guide to the contemporary art market... Hook is entertaining, and the anecdotes from his career are particularly lively." - Publishers Weekly
"A dishy lexicon of art-world topics and terminology...With its tone of art-history-textbook-meets-tabloid, Hook's witty primer provides a truthful yet humorous crash course, an insider's take that is more gentle ribbing than art world exposé." - Booklist
"How to nail the mad, bad, crazy contemporary art world in print? Sotheby's senior director Hook...unravels, with humor, piquancy and erudition, what drives the economics of taste." - Financial Times
"Phillip Hook's delightful Breakfast at Sotheby's is a house sale of a book, a chance for him to clear out thirty-five years of memories as an art dealer and auctioneer, first at Christie's and then Sotheby's." - The Economist
"It's very hard to write an amusing book about art that has some serious things to say. But Phillip Hook has done it." - Sunday Times
This information about Breakfast at Sotheby's was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Philip Hook is a director and senior paintings specialist at Sotheby's. He has worked in the art world for thirty-five years, during which time he has also been a director of Christie's and an international art dealer. He is the author of five novels and two works of art history, including The Ultimate Trophy, a history of Impressionist painting.
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