Breakfast at Sotheby's: An A-Z of the Art World

When you stand in front of a work of art in a museum or exhibition, the first two questions you normally ask yourself are 1) Do I like it? and 2) Who€s it by?

When you stand in front of a work of art in an auction room or dealer€s gallery, you ask these two questions followed by others: How much is it worth? How much will it be worth in five or ten years€ time? And what will people think of me if they see it hanging on my wall?

  Breakfast at Sotheby€s is an alphabetical guide to how people reach answers to such questions, and how in the process art is given a financial value. Based on Philip Hook€s thirty-five years€ experience of the art market, Breakfast at Sotheby€s explores the artist and his hinterland (including definitions for -isms, middle-brow artists, Gericault, and suicides), subject and style (from abstract art and banality through surrealism and war), €œwall-power,€ provenance, and market weather.

  Comic, revealing, piquant, splendid, and occasionally absurd, Breakfast at Sotheby€s is a book of pleasure and intelligent observation, as engaged with art as it is with the world that surrounds it.