In his new book, Art of the Deal, Noah Horowitz, an art historian and professor at the Sotheby’s Art Institute, argues that it’s all happened in the last fifty years -- and that the art market has become a complex, globalized, money-making machine for the well-connected. The story, as Horowitz tells it, starts in the 1950s, when museums, flush with post-war prosperity, began to grow in size and power. Museums bought up all the old art, pushing up prices -- and pushing collectors towards the contemporary art market, where prices soon began to rise, too. At the same time, the global economy became more integrated, and businesspeople got better at putting together complex, international deals of all kinds. That expertise inevitably spread into the art world.

The result, Horowitz argues, is an art market that’s no different from any other international market: It’s often characterized by behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing, designed to maximize profit. Investors in New York, say, might see an opportunity in contemporary Chinese art. They form an investment consortium, which hires a buyer to find artwork in China. After the collection is put together, the investors work to get the artworks exhibited in art museums around the world. Then, Horowitz writes, “the body of work, now a museum-quality ‘collection,’” is sold in turn to another dealer or auction house, and eventually at auction to other art buyers. All the players work together to transform little-known artworks into valuable assets; even the museums are caught up in the process, though often unknowingly. All this is possible because the art market brings two contradictory elements together: on the one hand, huge sums of money; on the other, objects that have no intrinsic, easy to determine monetary value. (Sound familiar?)

What does the new economic climate mean for the art market? It’s hard to say, of course, but one thing is certain: as things are right now, Horowitz writes, the system is eroding the idea that art “is more than just an empty stepping stone to social, political, and economic enrichment.” The art market depends, ultimately, on trust, both in the idea of art and in the basically artistic motives of the world’s art institutions. The more art dealers resemble speculators, and museum galleries showrooms, the more than trust is undermined.