The last quarter century has been an extraordinary and turbulent period
in the art world. It was a time of creative intensity during which a
handful of artists, like Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, Keith Haring, and
Jean-Michel Basquiat, managed, in their different ways, to cross over
from the rarefied world of high art into popular culture. It was also a
time when other promising careers and even whole movements, like
Graffiti, spurted to life and then just as suddenly disappeared. During
the astonishing boom years of the 1980s, the newly vigorous art market
transformed the role of dealers and collectors to give them
unprecedented power as tastemakers and the dangerous glamour of
Hollywood power agents. And then came the bust.
Writer Anthony Haden-Guest has moved within the art world, known the
players, and reported on the scene for this entire span of time. True
Colors draws on two decades of reporting to deliver an authoritative
and deliciously inside account of the contemporary art world that will
be the most talked-about book on art since The Shock of the New.
Haden-Guest gives vivid portraits of the art world's key players and
dramatizes the pivotal moments in the always evolving scene. Skillfully
conveying a sense of the intricate geography of the art world, he tells
of its clashes of ambition, its intrigues, its power plays. This is how
artists survive, or don't survive. True Colors is filled with telling
anecdotes and expertly told stories that cohere to give a sense of how
the art world works, its current state, and where it may be going.
