The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion. In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture.

薩拉·桑頓（Sarah Thornton），作傢，社會學傢。於加拿大濛特利爾的康哥迪亞大學取得藝術史專業的碩士學位，於格拉斯哥的斯特賴斯剋萊德大學缺的社會學博士學位。她是蘇賽剋斯大學的全職講師，後在倫敦大學金史密斯學院做訪問學者。她早期的作品主要圍繞亞文化、媒介和文化傳承，近作則聚焦於藝術世界和藝術市場。