Orange Balloon Dog. Blown Sensations and Genuine Masterpieces: What and How on the Contemporary Art Market

In the fall of 2014, visitors to New York's auctions at «Sotheby's» and «Christie's» spent 1.7 billion dollars on contemporary art over the course of forty-eight hours. Some lots were immediately sent to a duty-free warehouse in a free port zone - sharing the fate of a million other artworks, waiting for profitable resale, languishing in such warehouses around the world. One of the five sparkling «Balloon Dogs» by Jeff Koons was sold at auction for a record amount, exceeding the previous record price for a work by a living artist by 50%. Christopher Wool's painting «Apocalypse Now» - four lines of black text on a white background - went for 28 million dollars. These and other fantastic stories from the everyday life of the art market are analyzed in his book «Orange Balloon Dog» by economist and bestselling author «How to Sell a $12 Million Shark’s Formaldehyde» Don Thompson, lifting the veil of mystery over how the «price of art» is determined and changes in hot spots of the contemporary art market from New York to London, Singapore, and Beijing.