Rafaëlle Hassine

Forschungsprojekt

Since the late 1990s, the contemporary art market has undergone considerable development, both in terms of geographic expansion and transaction volume. This growth has been accompanied by an oligopolization of the sector: a handful of firms (galleries and auction houses), with subsidiaries in Europe, the United States, and Asia, dominate this trade.

The ethnography at the heart of this dissertation is embedded in the networks of production and circulation of contemporary artworks, promoted and marketed by the companies that make up this oligopoly. It reconstructs the trajectory of artworks, from their conception to their transfer on the primary market, where they are sold for the first time (often through galleries) to collectors, businesses, or institutions (museums and foundations). The actors in this market aspire not only to sell these creations, but also to build the reputation of their authors.

Through a multi-sited ethnography of the professionals who populate these networks (artists, studio managers, analysts, logistics coordinators, communications officers, technical directors, sales staff, etc.), the dissertation re-examines the question of how artworks’ value is constructed. It draws on ethnographic research conducted between 2020 and 2024, combining fifteen months of participant observation of daily work, a hundred interviews with professionals, as well as qualitative and quantitative analyses of private archives.

By studying the practical knowledge of these professionals, dispersed across the spaces through which artworks circulate, and by taking into account the different temporalities of their trajectories, this research investigates how these actors make this market – considered singular by the social sciences and economics – function, and how they represent its functioning.