Art Exposed

"I studied art history and worked in a gallery before I slid down the cultural hierarchy to do my PhD on dance clubs and raves," says author Sarah Thornton, whose said PhD was published in book form as Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital in 1996. "Writing Seven Days in the Art World was a way of returning to my first love," she continues, "but this time venturing behind the scenes." Indeed, Thornton's new book draws back the velvet curtain on the contemporary art scene that in the past decade has become more insular than ever before. With Seven Days, Thornton chronicles seven fast-paced days—The Auction (Christie's, New York), The Crit (CalArts), The Fair (Switzerland), The Prize (Tate Britain, London), The Magazine (Artforum, New York), The Studio Visit (Takashi Murakami's studios, Japan) and The Biennale (Venice)—in an effort to "understand some of the mechanisms by which artists get attention.”

Thornton, who lives and writes in London, interviewed over 250 people for the book and says she tried to approach the entire project with an open mind. Any preconceived ideas she may have had going in have since "been wiped clean by what I've experienced." But if she learned anything in particular, or if there is something she wants the reader to take away from the book, it might be this: "Many outsiders see the art world as elitist ... and it is, except it is also oddly down-to-earth and embracing of oddballs who don't fit in well anywhere else." Needless to say, those oddballs are always welcome in our pages.