Girls on the beach with parasols, nude women or crashing planes?

A nude woman or a plane crashing is the best cover for the magazine Artforum when they want to sell single copies, according to the writer, art historian and sociologist Sarah Thornton who met the editors when making research for her book “Seven days in the art world.”

Two students from the School of economics in Gothenburg made a survey for their paper “The prize of art”, before the crisis on the art market. Olle Eckerbom and Magnus Sjöqvist wanted to know the mechanism behind the price of an art work. In an interview with them and the art gallery Åmells in Stockholm they came to a conclusion and a suggestion to artists who want to make money: paint young girls on the beach, with parasols! Don’t paint too many of the girls though, because then the price will fall.

Here we go. The motifs are ser for the market. Girls, girls, by men men,

Sarah Thornton is like the young boy in the fairy-tale by Hans Christian Andersen, “The Emperor's New Clothes, who asks the question which normally seems too obvious and people rarely dare to ask. Why does the emperor not have any clothes on?

Sarah Thornton let us readers follow her meetings with the people who work on the art magazine Artforum - the editors, the critics and the advertisement-department.  We walk along with Sarah Thornton on the Venice Biennale area. Follow the tensions in an auction house Christie's. Meet the artist Takashi Murakami and the industry around him. Take part of a very special Crit Session at California Institute of the Arts. Mingle with the VIP on the Art Basel art fair and get an insight in the process of the Turner prize. We get insight into the art institutional life.

This art world is alive and kicking, and we get to experience the different parts of creating and forming The Art Life. All described as it if it happened during seven days. It is like a feverish strange dream. Hey, is there anything else but art?

“W-o-r-l-d”, what’s that, when you can be first in line to buy the hottest art work or have your gallery advertisement on the right page in The Magazine?

After reading the book all at once, you want to get out. I long to read about ART. Not the art-world. I try to think about what art is really about for me, what makes me work with art? It is about the art itself, the new horizons it opens, the people you meet - not about money, not about Prada-shoes neither fancy-living. I close my eyes and recall some stunning sublime art works.