Vanity Fair: A Story of Greed, Riches and the Rise and Rise of the Art Market

A Jackson Pollock went for $140 million in 2006, the greatest sum paid for a work of art to date. But the record probably won't last long. Well-respected expert Godfrey Barker strips back the layers of paint to reveal the fraud, folly and profit that has led to the rise and rise of the international art market - and reveals the stories of some of the most expensive paintings ever sold. The incredible rise of picture prices began in the Victorian speculative market, when living artists began to be priced higher than old Masters. The boom was heightened in the next century by Hitler's Fuhrer museum and the explosive market in the Impressionists. After 1960, America pumped speculative cash into De Kooning, Warhol and the rest, their work glowing by more than 10,000 percent, and today, far from calming down, the sky-high spiral looks set to go stratospheric.Godfrey Barker is the world's leading writer on the art marker, and his crisply written and colourfully anecdotal book will prove particularly controversial with revelations and figures that will shock financiers and art insiders, as well as the world at large.