"The numbers were reported with breathless enthusiasm. Headlines announced a 42% increase over last year's equivalent sales. The press framed the evening as a triumph and a sign that the art market was healthy again. Watching the coverage felt like watching a magic trick you have already seen too many times. A staggering figure appears on the screen, and the audience nods along. The illusion works because everyone agrees not to ask what the number actually means. It works because the number is the performance."
"Auction houses rely on this sleight of hand. Their job is not to measure value. Their job is to perform it. Sarah Thornton wrote about this clearly in Seven Days in the Art World (2009), where she describes auctions as rituals rather than markets, spaces where belief is manufactured through choreography. Reading her work changed how I saw these rooms. The scripts, the coded gestures, the artificial suspense, the carefully timed applause, the way the room breathes in unison."
Massive auction totals and dramatic headlines create an appearance of health while obscuring underlying instability. Auction houses stage rituals that perform value rather than measure it, using choreography, timing, and spectacle to manufacture collective belief. The ritual elements — scripts, coded gestures, artificial suspense, applause and synchronized audience behavior — reassure collectors and the public that the system functions. Those performances prioritize luxury investment and status signaling over an accurate account of what art is worth or what artists and institutions actually need. Reported numbers therefore mislead about the true condition of the art economy.
Read at Hyperallergic
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