“During the art boom of the first years of the new millenium, market success became the measure of all things, while at the same time remaining curiously dependent on the consecrating authorities that vouch for symbolic importance (criticism, art history, the museum). But this development by no means came from nowhere. Rather, it must be seen as the result of a gradual structural change within the art world that took place in cyclical movements, the pace of which sped up in the 1980s and 90s.”

—Isabelle Graw, High Price: Art Between the Market and Celebrity Culture (Sternberg Press, 2009)