Celebrity Effect in the Contemporary Art Market

Alessia Zorloni, Antonella Ardizzone
in A. Zorloni (a cura di), Art Wealth Management. Managing Private Art Collections, Springer, Heidelberg, 2016

This chapter shows the results of empirical research conducted on a sample of the 155 most famous contemporary artists in the world in order to analyze the competitive dynamics regulating the system of contemporary arts. Results show that the contemporary art market is a winner-take-all market subject to network effects where collectors influence the artist’s notoriety, making the artist even more attractive to additional buyers and accelerating the process of mainstream adhesion.