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

By Philip Hook

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), “wall-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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Oct 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781468310306

Philip Hook

Philip Hook is a Board member and senior director of Impressionist & Modern art at Sotheby's in London. He previously worked at Christie's in the 19th Century Paintings Department. He has appeared regularly on Antiques Roadshow and is the author of five novels and many books on the art world, including Breakfast at Sotheby's (2013) which was a book of the year in the Sunday Times, Spectator, Financial Times, Guardian and Mail on Sunday.

Reviews for Breakfast at Sotheby's

[pattylee-621744 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting and entertaining info on the business of art from a real insider. Aside from being an excellent writer, Hook is pretty funny and self-deprecating, in true Brit fashion. My only issue with both of Hook’s books is the lack of quality color plates. Of course, the reason is the cost of these plates, but it took me longer to read because I had to keep referring to my laptop! Nonetheless, if the topic is interesting to you- highly recommended.

[jon1lambert · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Philip Hook's Breakfast at Sotheby's is a quick and enjoyable read. 'Perhaps most of us are train-spotters at heart' (page 182) wasn't a sentence I would expect to read within it. But there it is in the section explaining why some art collectors buy railway paintings. Hook even suggests that railways changed the way people painted, for instance a quick day return may have encouraged a speedy Impressionist approach. I now know that anger doesn't sell as well as angst. Smiles are popular but if there is no smile existentialist turmoil may do. Suicide lifts prices, for example. I wasn't aware of the suggestion that Van Gogh was shot by a man out shooting rabbits and did not kill himself. The rabbit ending would have seriously diminished the value of Van Gogh's paintings as well as his fame and reputation.