Some Interesting News: Forbes

Article in Forbes today, "Pump and Dump," investigates the ways in which artists, buyers and dealers are working the contemporary Chinese art market.

"It is no secret that the Chinese contemporary art market is blistering hot, but outsiders have little idea of the murky ways the market's players have been cashing in for the last few years. With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, China's high-earning artists, speculators, middlemen and critics have come up with some creative ways to manufacture demand. Artists are mass-producing paintings, auction houses are working with artists and dealers to juice up prices, and artists are paying for praise and exhibitions to build up their brands. If it were penny stocks being peddled, all this would go under the label of market manipulation. In the art world it's business as usual. Is there any law to stop a painter from bidding on his own artwork in order to create feverish demand? There isn't."

Read the entire article, it's interesting!