The meteoric rise of the largest unregulated financial market in the world -- for contemporary
art -- is driven by a few passionate guileful and very hard-nosed dealers. They can make and
break careers and fortunes. The contemporary art market is an international juggernaut
throwing off multimillion-dollar deals as wealthy buyers move from fair to fair auction to
auction party to glittering party. But none of it would happen without the dealers-the
tastemakers who back emerging artists and steer them to success often to see them picked off
by a rival. Dealers operate within a private world of handshake agreements negotiating for the
highest commissions. Michael Shnayerson a longtime contributing editor to Vanity Fair writes
the first ever definitive history of their activities. He has spoken to all of today's
so-called mega dealers -- Larry Gagosian David Zwirner Arne and Marc Glimcher and Iwan Wirth
-- along with dozens of other dealers -- from Irving Blum to Gavin Brown -- who worked with the
greatest artists of their times: Jackson Pollock Andy Warhol Cy Twombly and more. This
kaleidoscopic history begins in the mid-1940s in genteel poverty with a scattering of galleries
in midtown Manhattan takes us through the ramshackle 1950s studios of Coenties Slip the
hipster locations in SoHo and Chelsea London's Bond Street and across the terraces of Art
Basel until today. Now dealers and auctioneers are seeking the first billion-dollar painting.
It hasn't happened yet but they are confident they can push the price there soon.
