Discusses how to make a living at being a full-time artist and how to get started selling your art.

A fly-on-the-wall account of the smart and strange subcultures that make, trade, curate, collect, and hype contemporary art. 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.

During the middle decades of the twentieth century, the production of America's consumer culture was centralized in midtown Manhattan to an extent unparalleled in the history of the modern United States. Within a few square miles of skyscrapers were the headquarters of networks like NBC and CBS, the editorial offices of book publishers and mass circulation magazines such as Time and Life, numerous influential newspapers, and major advertising agencies on Madison Avenue. Every day tens of thousands of writers, editors, artists, performers, technicians, secretaries, and other white-collar workers made advertisements, produced media content, and enhanced the appearance of goods in order to boost sales. While this center of creativity has often been portrayed as a smoothly running machine, within these offices many white-collar workers challenged the managers and executives who directed their labors. In this definitive history, The Making of the American Creative Class examines these workers and their industries throughout the twentieth century. As manufacturers and retailers competed to attract consumers' attention, their advertising expenditures financed the growth of enterprises engaged in the production of culture, which in turn provided employment for an increasing number of clerical, technical, professional, and creative workers. The book explores employees' efforts to improve their working conditions by forming unions, experimenting with alternative media and cultural endeavors supported by public, labor, or cooperative patronage, and expanding their opportunities for creative autonomy. As blacklisting and attacks on militant unions left them destroyed or weakened, workers in advertising, design, publishing, and broadcasting in the late twentieth century were constrained in their ability to respond to economic dislocations and to combat discrimination in the culture industries. At once a portrait of a city and the national culture of consumer capitalism it has produced, The Making of the American Creative Class is an innovative narrative of modern American history that addresses issues of earnings and status still experienced by today's culture workers.

“A comprehensive guide.” —Artspace. “Whether you are new to the business or a seasoned gallerist, it is always wise to remember the essentials.” —Leigh Conner, director, Conner Contemporary Art Aspiring and new art gallery owners can find everything they need to plan and operate a successful art gallery with How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery. This new edition has been updated to mark the changes in market and technology over the past decade. Edward Winkleman and Patton Hindle draw on their years of experience to explain step by step how to start your new venture. From finding the ideal locale and renovating the space to writing business plans and securing start-up capital, this helpful guide has it all. Chapters detail how to: Manage cash flow Grow your new business Hire and manage staff Attract and retain artists and clients Represent your artists Promote your gallery and artists online Select the right art fair And more How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery, Second Edition, also includes sample forms, helpful tips from veteran collectors and dealers, a large section on art fairs, and a directory of art dealer associations.

"A book about the art business and how to prepare for success as a fine artist. de Wal offers practical advice on how to make the most of limited time, energy and resources to land that perfect day job--as an artist!"--Back cover.

Richard Byrne, black belt in shotokan and taekwondo, expert in tang soo do, 24 years as an instructor, and leading authority on breaking, has written his methods for developing speed, power and precision in delivering decisive blows through a progressive training program in the art of breaking, stressing both safety and correctness.