TY - BOOK ID - 77896251 TI - Talking prices : symbolic meanings of prices on the market for contemporary art PY - 2005 SN - 1400849403 9781400849406 9780691134031 0691134030 1299987583 PB - Princeton, New Jersey ; Woodstock : Princeton University Press, DB - UniCat KW - Art, American KW - Art, Dutch KW - Pricing KW - Art KW - Art, Occidental KW - Art, Visual KW - Art, Western (Western countries) KW - Arts, Fine KW - Arts, Visual KW - Fine arts KW - Iconography KW - Occidental art KW - Visual arts KW - Western art (Western countries) KW - Arts KW - Aesthetics KW - Price policy KW - Price policy, Industrial KW - Retail pricing KW - Marketing KW - Dutch art KW - Nieuwe Ploeg (Group of artists) KW - Ploeg (Group of artists) KW - American art KW - Eight (Group of American artists) KW - Indian Space (Group of artists) KW - Mission School (Group of artists) KW - NO!Art (Group of artists) KW - Old Bohemians (Group of artists) KW - Stieglitz Circle (Group of artists) KW - Prices. KW - Social aspects KW - Prices KW - Psychological aspects. KW - Art, Primitive UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:77896251 AB - How do dealers price contemporary art in a world where objective criteria seem absent? Talking Prices is the first book to examine this question from a sociological perspective. On the basis of a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data, including interviews with art dealers in New York and Amsterdam, Olav Velthuis shows how contemporary art galleries juggle the contradictory logics of art and economics. In doing so, they rely on a highly ritualized business repertoire. For instance, a sharp distinction between a gallery's museumlike front space and its businesslike back space safeguards the separation of art from commerce. Velthuis shows that prices, far from being abstract numbers, convey rich meanings to trading partners that extend well beyond the works of art. A high price may indicate not only the quality of a work but also the identity of collectors who bought it before the artist's reputation was established. Such meanings are far from unequivocal. For some, a high price may be a symbol of status; for others, it is a symbol of fraud. Whereas sociological thought has long viewed prices as reducing qualities to quantities, this pathbreaking and engagingly written book reveals the rich world behind these numerical values. Art dealers distinguish different types of prices and attach moral significance to them. Thus the price mechanism constitutes a symbolic system akin to language. ER -