TIAMSA Member News: New Book “Mercados da Arte” by Luís Urbano Afonso and Alexandra Fernandes

We are delighted to inform you of the upcoming release of the book Mercados da Arte by Luís Urbano Afonso and Alexandra Fernandes on 26th November 2019.

As this book may be of particular interest to those coming to the TIAMSA conference this year, the publisher has very generously offered a 10% discount and will accept pre-orders, which can be delivered to the conference prior to the official release of the book on 26th November.

Please note that this book is in Portuguese.

Translated Summary:

“Since the beginning of the new millennium, gross art market turnover has tripled. The global total is now estimated to be $ 70 billion. This growth has, however, been based more on the dramatic price increase of a limited number of works of art, created by a tiny group of artists, than on a systemic rise in the unit value of the majority of traded goods. This shows, in short, that art markets and their products are getting more polarized, and disproportionate. These are the issues, which we analyze in this book, adopting as we do a theoretical and practical standpoint. We explain, for example, phenomena such as the market’s concentration on a handful of blue-chip artists and the relationship between the classical canons of the past in Europe, China and West Asia and the aesthetic rules of today.

This book will interest anyone who wishes to know the structure, dynamics, and key trends of today’s global art markets, as well as the history of the art markets from the Middle Ages to the present. Highlighting the relevance of the economic dimension of the artistic phenomenon, the authors analyze how material concerns interact with the strictly cultural and artistic dimension of works of art. The authors consider, and assume, that the economic aspects present in the processes of production, promotion and marketing of the fine arts constitute a significant variable enabling us to understand the conditions that involve artistic creation, its validation and its consumption.

This book is intended for students of art history and fine art as well as other related studies linked to the creative industries. It is certainly a book for those engaged in the art industry whether as a dealer or a museum curator. More broadly, it is a book that should interest anyone with a curiosity in markets in general; and, of course, the events that determine the performance of these markets.”

This is a fantastic opportunity to get your hands on the book as it will not be available worldwide.

Pre-orders can be made to Joana Robalo: joana.robalo@silabo.pt