Prize & price: The Turner Prize as a valuation device in the contemporary art market

Poetics xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

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POETIC-1145; No. of Pages 23

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Poetics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/poetic

Prize & price: The Turner Prize as a valuationdevice in the contemporary art market

Pierre Penet a,b,*, Kangsan Lee a

a Northwestern University, Department of Sociology, 1810 Chicago Avenue, Evanston, IL 60208, USAb SciencesPo. Paris, Observatoire Sociologique du Changement, FNSP/CNRS, 27 rue Saint-Guillaume, 75337Paris Cedex 07, France

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:

Available online xxx

Keywords:

Valuation mechanisms

Art prizes

Market devices

Art market

A B S T R A C T

High prices garnered by British contemporary artists are often

presented as a problem of valuation. This article seeks to connect

the rapid ascent of British contemporary artists to the emergence

and institutionalization of the Turner Prize, today’s most presti-

gious art award. Although prizes and awards proliferate in fields of

cultural production, little academic research has investigated their

implications for artists’ careers and trajectories. Combining a

detailed, qualitative description of the institutionalization of the

Turner Prize with a quantitative investigation of its influence on

auction prices, we find that British contemporary artists’ unusual

valuation pattern (fast market ascension and hastened, rather than

‘‘deferred,’’ commercial success) largely results from a different

relation between value and price rooted in the Turner Prize’s three

innovative valuation mechanisms: brokerage, deliberation, and

institutional labeling.

� 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

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Always remember, New Yorkers, young British art now dominates the world, even your world.(Collings and MacMillan, 1998, p. 36)

Picasso later told me, very correctly, ‘‘In order for paintings to be sold at high prices, they mustfirst have been sold very cheaply.’’(Kahnweiler, 1971, pp. 39–40; quoted in Galenson, 2005, p. 35)

responding author at: Northwestern University, Department of Sociology, 1810 Chicago Avenue, Evanston, IL 60208,

ail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (P. Penet),

[email protected] (K. Lee).

se cite this article in press as: Penet, P., Lee, K., Prize & price: The Turner Prize as a valuation devicee contemporary art market. Poetics (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2014.01.003

22X/$ – see front matter � 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2014.01.003

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Instant success is suspect and compromising; it casts doubt on the authenticity of the work andon its power to endure. Lack of success can be regarded as proof of the honesty of the artist andpresumptive in favor of his genius.(Moulin, 1987, p. 127)

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, signaling the beginningof a global financial meltdown. The very same evening in London, Damien Hirst sold an unprecedented$270 million worth of art at Christie’s. In both cases, commentators called the sheer magnitude of theevent yet another example of the exuberant, bubble-prone, and seemingly unpredictable pattern ofvalue change in contemporary markets. To many, that day marked the bursting of one bubble and theformation of a new one. For although Hirst’s extraordinary success shocked many and received intensemedia coverage, heady prices are hardly new in the art market. Edward Munch’s The Scream sold foralmost $120 million at Sotheby’s in May 2012. Hirst’s age, however—only 43 years old at the time ofthe auction—made his success unusual. Hirst had been 40 when his famous stuffed shark reportedlysold for $12 million—more money than was ever brought by Gerhard Richter, Robert Rauschenberg, orany living contemporary artists (Thompson, 2009).

Hirst is not an anomaly but instead the most representative figure of a very successful generationof young British contemporary artists. Of the top 50 living artists under age 50 issued by Artfacts in2008, 12 are British, 7 are German, and only 5 are American.1 Additionally, among all living artists in2005, only two garnered $1 million or more at auction before the age of 40: Damien Hirst and fellowBritish artist Chris Ofili (Galenson, 2005). Overall, British artists have achieved high levels of successmore rapidly than their renowned predecessors,2 to the extent that London came to challenge NewYork’s six-decade-long supremacy as the world’s art capital, a title it had ‘‘stolen’’ from Paris(Guilbaut, 1985). It is an understatement to say that the rapid success of a new wave of British artiststook the art world by surprise, since British art had experienced relative anonymity for most of the20th century and London was hardly an influential city in the art world. That young Britishcontemporary artists were able to achieve such rapid market success poses a set of interestingquestions about valuation.

As in any given market environment, competing exchange models, ‘‘circuits of commerce,’’ andmechanisms of resource distribution exist across market segments (Zelizer, 2004). In the artmarket, different valuation mechanisms apply depending on whether an artist has already beenestablished and tested by time. The history of the modern art market is replete with examples ofoverlooked geniuses and of late-career commercial success.3 The slow conversion of estheticeminence into market value conforms to the process known as ‘‘deferred success’’ (Moulin, 1987).By the logic of deferred success, early careers are mediocre and artists accumulate recognitiongradually from a diverse group of gatekeepers (Hirsch, 1972); this recognition then translates,incrementally, into commercial success. Furthermore, whereas artists in the early stages of theircareer face radical uncertainty (Knight, 1985) and challenging price decisions (Fine, 2006),established artists are more likely to command high prices, reflecting the robust reputation builtand stabilized throughout a career (e.g., a milestone monographic retrospective exhibition at a topinternational museum [Jensen, 1996]). Price is thus ‘‘discovered’’ through a process of cumulativevaluation based upon a slow and delayed conversion of artistic value into price. As the epigraphfrom Moulin indicates, deferred success is what makes it possible to distinguish between ephemeraand art. The logic of deferred success also regulates the production of value in other culturalindustries: literature (Bourdieu, 2008), poetry (Dubois, 2009), wine (Garcia-Parpet, 2008), andfashion (Mears, 2011).

This article seeks to connect the high prices garnered by young contemporary artists to the recentproliferation of art prizes. Nowadays, few cultural products escape evaluation, ranking, rating, or

top 50 living artists over age 50 show a very different pattern: only 2 are British, 9 are German, and 22 are American.

i was 37 in 2005 when Afrodizzia sold for more than $1 million and Hirst was 35 when In Love—Out of Love sold for

0 in 2000. In comparison, Pollock was 37 in 1949 when Number 12 was bought for $300 by Edgar Kaufmann, and Picasso

when Albert Barnes spent $300 to acquire Peasants and Oxen in 1913 (Mayor, 1957; Robson, 1990; Thompson, 2009).

ously, French Impressionists such as Monet, Renoir, and Degas were long overlooked by the market until the value of

t increased substantially when they were in the later stages of their career or were long dead (Rewald, 1973).

se cite this article in press as: Penet, P., Lee, K., Prize & price: The Turner Prize as a valuation devicee contemporary art market. Poetics (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2014.01.003


P. Penet, K. Lee / Poetics xxx (2014) xxx–xxx 3

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review (Blank, 2007). Prizes come in widely diverse forms: bankrolled by prestigious museums,powerful foundations, or by corporate money, they are international or regional, and their cash awardscan range from several thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although prizes and awardsproliferate in fields of cultural production, little academic research has investigated theirconsequences for artists’ career and trajectories. In this article, we take the emergence andinstitutionalization of the British Turner Prize as a model for analyzing the effects and implications ofart prizes.

The Turner Prize (TP) is today’s most prestigious art prize. First awarded in 1984, the TP anticipatedand served as the model for a wave of new art prizes in the late 1990s. The emergence of the TP reflectsthe local specificities and opportunity structure of the British art world in the early 1980s. The TP wasan outcome of the internal reconfiguration of the Tate Gallery in the early 1980s, in the context of anemerging contemporary art scene and a decline in public funding for the arts (see Section 3). Hit by theThatcher administration’s vast reduction of budget expenditures in 1979, the Tate was left with littlemeans to buy contemporary art and was effectively squeezed out of the market. Although mostinternational museums faced budget shortages in the 1980s and 1990s, non-profit Americanmuseums could still rely on significant endowments and generous donations to fund acquisitions(Alexander, 1996). French museums, for their part, benefited massively from the five-fold increase ofthe budget of the Ministry of Culture between 1981 and 1993 (French Ministry of Culture, 2014). Incontrast, the Tate had to invent something else. In order to reposition itself, in 1982, the Tateestablished the Patrons of New Art (PNA), an internal committee whose mission was to raise privatemoney so as to ensure the possibility of future purchases (Stout and Carey-Thomas, 2007).Nonetheless, the building of a collection of contemporary art could not be achieved in the short term.The idea of the TP was instigated by the PNA as a strategy to mount contemporary art without havingto collect it.4

The TP celebrates ‘‘the person who, in the opinion of the jury, has made the greatest contribution toart in Britain in the previous twelve months.’’5 The competition is open to any British-based artist whohas presented an ‘‘outstanding exhibition’’ in the past 12 months. Although many nominated artistsare established enough to be represented by a dealer, they remain comparatively unknown. Bysignaling what it is worth keeping, the TP supplies crucial information and guidance to collectors,dealers, and lay audiences about the value of an artist. In this article, we characterize the TP as aninstitutional innovation that enabled unusual market trajectories with respect to the prices garneredby artists at auction.

Study of the Turner Prize has implications for sociological research on the current proliferation ofprizes and awards in fields of cultural production. The TP has been emulated around the world sincethe late 1990s, notably the Hugo Boss Prize (New York City, 1996), the Marcel Duchamp Prize (Paris,2000), and the National Gallery Prize for Young Art (Berlin, 2000). Our research also contributes to abetter understanding of recent examples of seemingly irrational value change in the art market and inother market environments. Drawing on the results of a quantitative analysis of auction data, we arguethat, rather than expressing an irrational pattern of value increase, the valuation problem describedabove speaks to a change in the selection system of which the emergence and institutionalization ofthe British TP appears as the most significant manifestation.

This article is organized as follows. In the second section, we review three related strands ofliterature on art valuation: deferred valuation, uncertain valuation, and bubble valuation. We suggestthat a market device approach centered on the TP provides a better approach to art valuation of youngcontemporary artists. In the third section, we start by describing the features of the TP, from which wethen derive the three mechanisms of brokerage, deliberation and institutional labeling. We conclude thesection by suggesting that the changing nature of the TP implies a changing influence on thetrajectories of nominated artists. In Section 4, we discuss the data and method. In Section 5, we presentthe results and, in Section 6, the conclusions.

4 As future Tate Director Nicholas Serota declared: ‘‘It seems that maybe the Tate was using the Turner Prize as a way of

discharging its responsibilities by seeming to embrace contemporary art without having to endorse it or commit to collecting it

systematically’’ (Stout and Carey-Thomas, 2007, p. 17).5 Found on the TP website: http://www.turnerprize.co.uk/#/history/4558254008.

Please cite this article in press as: Penet, P., Lee, K., Prize & price: The Turner Prize as a valuation devicein the contemporary art market. Poetics (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2014.01.003

http://www.stuckism.com/realturner.html



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2. Valuations in the art market

2.1. Valuation through deferred success

In the art market, price setting is a social process that occurs between the qualities of an artworkand the assessments of buyers and sellers. However, the art market has no objective (production orlabor cost) or moral standards by which value can be produced, stabilized, and diffused. Hence, theparadox of the art market is well known: the setting of a price requires the production of equivalencebetween artworks that yet derive their value from being unique. Sociologists have approached the artmarket as a mediated market where price setting is anchored in the collaborative practices of anetwork of intermediaries deemed qualified to select, appraise, and distribute art (Becker, 1984). Intheir study of the genesis of the modern art market in 19th century France, White and White (1965)described the role of an emerging web of intermediaries composed of art critics, curators, collectors,and dealers. The ‘‘dealer-critic’’ system conveys a productive ‘‘specialization of roles in the art world’’(White and White, 1965, p. 112), wherein academic training, dealer entrepreneurship, criticalappreciation, and museum exhibition all account for specific forms of valuation contributing tocommercial success. If their model was initially applied to the emergence of French Impressionism, itnonetheless retains explanatory power for more recent artistic styles. For example, the fruitfulcollaboration of Clement Greenberg, Leo Castelli, MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art), and BlackMountain College proved crucial to the success of American art in the 1950 and 1960s, notablyAbstract Expressionism (Crane, 1989).

The logic of deferred success originates in this specialization of roles. As qualified intermediarieswere brought into the limelight, they grew more professionalized and academically trained. No longererudite amateurs, their judgment criteria grew distinct from external—political, economic—influenceand came to reflect the scholarly training that they received. Soon, artistic valuation bestowed byintermediaries required a set of specific knowledge-based skills and credentials—an ‘‘eye’’ (Baxandall,1988)—in order to be understood. In Bourdieu’s terms, these skills and credentials operate as a form ofcultural capital because they are unequally distributed and acquired though a long learning process(Bourdieu, 1984). Endowed with endogenous criteria for selection and reward, the cognitive basis ofthe art market became evermore opaque to the non-specialist. Overall, these qualified and specializedintermediaries redefined market success as requiring a series of transitions between differentpositions and networks of trust, what Giuffre (1999) has conceptualized as a ‘‘sandpiles ofopportunity.’’

Thus, the growth in specialization of the art market infrastructure makes the conversion of estheticeminence into economic success less straightforward and increases the time needed for the market toproduce stable value standards and high price levels. Therefore, under the logic of deferred success,early careers are typically mediocre and the valuation process may take years or decades. And it mayextend beyond the lives of the artists, allowing logics of discoveries and rediscoveries (Haskell, 1980).

2.2. Uncertain valuation

The slow pattern of market value increase predicted under the logic of deferred success isreinforced by the problem of uncertainty inherent in the market for young contemporary artists. First,typically, little information is available for young artists. When information exists, it is partial,antagonistic, and prone to significant change. Radical uncertainty thus prevails (Knight, 1985). Second,the supply of future work from young artists is potentially unlimited. In contrast, established artists’artworks exist as a finite body of works and in limited supply, which increases scarcity and drivesprices up. Third—without a record of art collectors’ purchasing choices, validation of value throughmuseum exhibitions, inclusion in prestigious private collections or appreciation signaled by strongresale interest at auctions—buyers’ preferences are not yet formed or are prone to substantial drop orfluctuation. Furthermore, records of past price levels for established artists represent important inputsfor current and future market judgments about an artwork’s quality. Once the esthetic value of anartwork is established, price levels can become powerful indicators of the quality of art. Value andprice are congruent and self-reproducing only in the long term (Velthuis, 2005). Finally, whereas the




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avant-garde movements of the 19th and 20th centuries showed style-based or subject-based forms ofcategorization (impressionism, abstraction, etc.), contemporary art encompasses a broad diversity offormat, technique, and medium, and it is thus not conducive to the creation of equivalent genrecategories (Michaud, 1997). The loosening of genre categories is problematic because they typicallyinfluence buyers’ assessments of value relative to other artists known as comparable and desirable(DiMaggio, 1987; Hsu and Hannan, 2005; Khaire and Wadhwani, 2010). Without genre categoriesoperating as clear value standards, contemporary art invariably faces highly debatable definitions ofwhat qualifies as art, further complicating art valuation (Heinich, 1998).

Overall, young contemporary artists are risky bets and not always tradable in market terms. Assuch, they are unlikely to fetch high prices in the early stages of their careers. The deferred success anduncertainty approaches do not provide a consistent framework for understanding why young Britishcontemporary artists garnered high prices in the early stages of their career.

2.3. Bubble valuation

A last approach views rapid market success as a manifestation of a market bubble. A bubble is adiscrepancy between a good’s intrinsic value and its price—one that will ‘‘burst’’ at some point, withthe price falling suddenly and dramatically. Drawing on insights from both the deferred success anduncertainty approaches, a large number of scholars, art critics, and pundits have denied that thesuccess of contemporary British art could express any meaningful correlation between commercialsuccess and artistic value. Several arguments are mobilized. First, critics have located the roots ofmarket success in the ‘‘oppositional and entrepreneurial’’ motives of British artists, with them willingto compromise with the market by seeking ‘‘the inspired gesture as opposed to patient work’’(Heartfield, 2005, p. 23). The emergence of contemporary British art was also depicted as the result ofthe fraudulent influence of big collectors—notably Charles Saatchi—in misleading buyers.6 The influenceof wealthy new art collectors from emerging countries was also said to have had an impact on the successof this generation.7 Finally, the rapid success of British art prompted art scholars to downplay its estheticsignificance, emphasizing instead it as a reflection of the ‘‘irrationality’’ and ‘‘insanity’’ of a market thathad grossly misrepresented the value of art (Thornton, 2009, p. 39). As we mentioned above, instantsuccess is suspicious under the logic of deferred success (Heinich, 2000; Moulin, 1987). ConcerningDamien Hirst, art critics argued that his reputation was ‘‘unjustified’’ and ‘‘absurd’’ (Hughes, 2008; Lewis,2010). Similarly, Tracey Emin’s My Bed—an installation shortlisted for the 1999 TP—was described as ascam: ‘‘I don’t see how getting out of bed and leaving the bed unmade and putting it on show and sayingthat’s worth, I don’t know £31,000. . .I don’t believe it, I think it’s a con.’’8

However, these explanations do not add up for several reasons. First, there is no evidence thatmoney-driven and provocative artists are more prone to achieve commercial success. Detractors maketoo much of the character and personality of contemporary artists. It is nearly impossible todemonstrate that British contemporary artists have pursued more commercially oriented goals than,say, French Impressionists.9 More importantly, artists do not engender their own market. Animportant question thus remains: why were British artists allowed to succeed earlier than previous

generations of artists? Second, if young British artists did benefit from the support of powerful galleries,

6 For instance, Saatchi was accused of using his position as a trustee of the Tate Gallery to have his collection of young British

artists featured at the Tate and to use the museum’s blessing to drive up the value of their work (Hawthorne, 1985, p. 79; cited in

Rosenberg, 2010, p. 147).7 New buyers from non-Western countries like China and Russia now constitute a significant portion of buyers. Gallery owner

Barbara Gladstone declared: ‘‘I used to know everybody. . .But now there are new people constantly’’ (Thornton, 2009, p. 86). Of

all buyers at Hirst’s memorable sale at Christie’s on September 15, 2008, 39% had never bought contemporary art before, and

24% were new to Sotheby’s (The Economist, 2010).8 Comment made by Rolf Harris (BBC News, 2001).9 By reinterpreting lowbrow Barbizon-style landscapists and, thus, specializing in a market segment geared toward middle-

class tastes of decorative art (White and White, 1965, p. 92), one could argue that Impressionists too displayed commercial

motives. They too initially received scathing reviews. It was French critic Louis Leroy who, when denouncing sketchiness and

lack of workmanship in Monet, coined the word ‘‘Impressionism:’’ ‘‘Impression—I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that,

since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it. . .and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its

embryonic state is more finished than that seascape’’ (Rewald, 1973, p. 323).




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there was no shortage of innovative galleries in New York or Paris. Hence, it does not explain why

young British artists suddenly became more successful (in market terms) than French or American young

artists (Galenson, 2005), and why they did so specifically at the turn of the 1990s. Third, approachescentered on demand and the role of wealthy collectors in price levels dodge the question of preferenceformation (Douglas and Isherwood, 1996). The influx of vast amounts of money does not suffice todrive prices up without an underlying system of recognition and valuation. And, again, it does notsolve the following question: why did British artists benefit the most from this influx of money? Finally,the interpretation of unusual valuation patterns in terms of irrationality is not any more convincing.Recent work in the field of social studies of finance has made inroads into understanding patterns ofvalue change and instability. In an illuminating account, Abolafia (2010) argues that the dramatic shiftin value that represented the 2008 housing bubble in the U.S. emerged out of rational adaptation tochanging mechanisms of valuation that originated in endogenous changes brought about byregulatory and political pressures. Therefore, abrupt change in value does not necessarily reflectmarket irrationality; instead, it can reveal changing institutional mechanisms coordinating thefixation of value and the formation of preferences.

We adopt a similar position in our analysis of the valuation of British contemporary art.Acknowledging the limitation of these three approaches, we argue that the rapid success of Britishartists suggests, instead, a different relationship between (artistic) value and price rooted in a shift inthe valuation of young, not yet established artists. We locate this shift in the emergence of a newmarket device, the Turner Prize.

2.4. An alternative approach: valuation via market device

Departing from standard economic theory, the market device approach figures prominently in thenew wave of sociological studies dealing with mechanisms of valuation in market settings where theexchange of goods is guided by the search for what is appealing or trustworthy rather than by price(Beckert and Aspers, 2011; Lamont, 2012; Muniesa et al., 2007). Defined as ‘‘guideposts for individualand collective action’’ (Karpik, 2010, p. 44), market devices provide quality disclosure and signaling. Indoing so, they intervene directly in the production of value by shaping the worth of goods. Marketdevices also facilitate market exchange by providing commensuration between objects whoseidiosyncratic and multidimensional qualities would normally complicate their valuation. Research oncollege rankings (Espeland and Sauder, 2007), film reviews (Zuckerman and Kim, 2003), and creditratings (Carruthers, 2013) suggests another way to study the question of valuation by showing theintervention of valuation devices on value formation and consumer choice and decision.

A market device approach appears especially well suited to study the proliferation of art prizes andawards and, specifically, to analyze their implications for artists’ careers and trajectories in the highlyuncertain market sector of young contemporary art. There are three approaches found in literatureabout prizes and awards. Some have adopted a macro-approach, citing the centrality of prizes andawards in today’s art world (English, 2005; Street, 2005). Others have described in detail theemergence and institutionalization of a single prize taken as a case study, such as the Booker Prize(Anand and Jones, 2008; De Nooy, 1988) or the Academy Awards (Lincoln, 2007). Finally, numerousquantitative studies of film reviews have included prizes and awards as independent variables in abroad variable universe designed to assess box office performance.10 However, none of these studieshave combined a detailed, qualitative description of the format and features of a prize with aquantitative research design aimed at testing its influence on a certain outcome. In addition, almost noliterature exists on how prizes and awards change over time.11 Prizes are often viewed as wieldingstable and unidirectional effects, but they are in constant interplay with their environments. Devicestoo have histories. Their format evolves, and so do their mechanisms and effects.

We combine these three aspects (features, mechanisms, and changes) in our analysis of the TurnerPrize. Our analysis begins with a description of the concrete existence of the TP. The TP has a tangibleexistence manifested in its three main features: a jury, nomination criteria, and a yearlong

10 For a recent review of the literature, see Hadida (2009).11 To our knowledge, the only exception is Karpik’s investigation of the changing features of the Guide Michelin (Karpik, 2000).




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competition. By tracking the concrete and practical organization of the TP, and how it changes overtime, it is possible to infer potential mechanisms accounting for what the TP actually did. The TP wasnot immediately effective. It took several years before the prize stabilized its format. In fact, not all TPnominees have performed well on the market, suggesting that the award itself has had varyinginfluence on artists’ success. The TP is a fragile engine. Based on the qualitative description of thechanging configuration of features, we identify the three mechanisms of brokerage, deliberation, and

institutional labeling that we anticipate make the TP more or less consequential over time.

3. Under the hood: features, mechanisms, and evolution of the Turner Prize

3.1. Features of the Turner Prize

The TP is a hybrid market device combining the critical authority of a jury of experts, controversiesand scandals fueled by large media coverage, and the curiosity of diverse audiences who attend the Tate’sannual Turner Prize exhibition.12 These different features are combined during a yearlong competition—which begins in May, when nominated artists are shortlisted, and concludes in December with atelevised ceremony. We review the main features of the TP and how they evolve over time.

3.1.1. Jury

The authority of the TP derives from a jury. In May of each year, four artists are shortlisted by a juryof five judges. The Tate’s museum director both chairs the jury and selects its members. The jury alsocomprises a representative of the Patrons of New Art, and three other members, alternately a collector,an art critic, a curator, or a dealer. By ensuring that each profile is equally represented within the juryrotation, the TP strikes a subtle equilibrium between the commercial (dealer and collector) and artistic(curator and critic) profiles of market intermediaries, thus allowing an accurate representation of thebroad range of existing interests in the art market. With a format structured around stable positions tofill, the jury affirms its collective integrity above the turnover of interchangeable jury members.Nonetheless the necessity for such a heterogeneous jury to reach consensual decisions may producedispute between jury members over the relevant judgment criteria.

The Tate’s relationship with the TP grew more distant upon the opening of the Tate Modern in May2000. With a rich collection of contemporary art and dynamic temporary art exhibitions, theadministrators of the Gallery had achieved their primary goal to become a central site forcontemporary art and no longer needed the TP. Although the annual exhibit continued to be shown atthe Tate Britain, the TP grew more autonomous and decoupled from the Tate. This became evident in2005, when the TP jury no longer included PNA members.

3.1.2. Nomination criteria

If the jury shows a great deal of stability over time, at least until 2005, such is not the case fornomination criteria. During its early years, the TP administrators realized that the artists nominatedby the jury were too different in terms of age and career advancement. This problem ofcommensuration between nominees was acknowledged by Nicholas Serota, Director of the TateGallery since 1988, as ‘‘iniquitous [in that it drew] distinctions between artists of very different kinds’’(Thornton, 2009, p. 118). Lack of commensuration was also visible in the TP nomination of artprofessionals (curators, dealers, and critics) alongside artists. Another issue resided in the nominationof the same artists several years in a row, making the taste of the jury too obvious and furtherchallenging the fairness of the competition. For instance, all five artists nominated in 1984 went on towin the prize in later years.

Upon his appointment as Director of the Tate Gallery, Serota sought to remedy the problem by makingthe Turner an artist-only prize. But after the Drexel investment bank, TP’s corporate backer since 1987,declared bankruptcy in 1990, the TP was temporarily suspended and not awarded that year. As Serota

12 In addition to the specific citations, the material in Section 3 and Figures 1 through 3 draws generally on publicly available

information collected from various sources— including the Turner Prize website, artist websites, and galleries, as well as on the

dataset described in Section 4.



[(Fig._1)TD$FIG]

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011

Average Age at Nomination

Fig. 1. Average age of artists at Turner Prize nomination (1984–2011).


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recognized himself, the cancelation of the prize for 1990 was ‘‘unsought but not perhaps unwelcome’’(Stout and Carey-Thomas, 2007, p. 17). In 1991, the TP returned with a new criterion for artistnomination: a maximum age limit of 50, which was meant to address the problem of commensurationand fairness mentioned above. This collateral implication, however, would go on to change radically thepurpose of the prize. Instead of a reward for past achievement, such as done by the Baseball Hall of Fameor the Nobel Prize, the TP went on to nominate ‘‘late emergent’’ or ‘‘early midcareer’’ artists (Thornton,2009, p. 130). Significantly younger artists were nominated, including artists in their 20s. The averageage of nominees in 1991 was 29, down from 44 in 1984. This trend was maintained throughout the 1990sbefore age at nomination went back up again in the early 2000s (see Fig. 1).

With the age limit, the TP was able to cater to a new cohort of promising British artists emerging atthe time. These artists had gained first-hand exhibition experience during a string of seminal artist-ledshows held in London warehouses, the most famous being Freeze, an exhibition curated in 1988 byDamien Hirst. This group of artists was later enshrined as a network of artists known as ‘‘young Britishartists’’ (yBas) after a series of six eponymous exhibitions held at the Saatchi Gallery in Londonbetween 1992 and 1996. Throughout the 1990s, the fate of both the TP and yBas grew entwined. Thedynamics of the TP started to change in 2000 when, for the first time since 1991, the shortlist did notinclude yBas, which had some arguing that ‘‘Britart’’ was ‘‘officially dead’’ (Withers, 2000). FourteenyBas were nominated between 1991 and 1999, only eight since 2000. ‘‘We’ve moved on,’’ Serota stated(Vogel, 2000). This feeling was further reinforced when Saatchi closed its first gallery on BoundaryRoad, deaccessing the majority of Saatchi’s yBas collection.

3.1.3. Yearlong competition

Exhibition: During the competition, a public show of the nominees’ and the future prize winner’swork opens at Tate Britain in October. But not until 1991, and with the new format of the TP, did the prizehave a proper space to host its annual exhibit. In 1987, repeated space problems had forced TPadministrators to terminate the public announcement of the short-list and to suspend the yearly exhibitaltogether. But without the public announcement of the shortlist, and hence the possibility to see thenominees’ work on display at the Tate, the TP had lost its public dimension, thus compromising its verypurpose.13 The public announcement of the shortlist was definitively reinstated, reaffirming the annual

13 Serota later acknowledged the significance of the public exhibition: ‘‘I came to recognize that the format of the prize—the

early announcement of the shortlist and the public display of four artists’ work—spurs people to reflect about art’’ (Thornton,

2009, p. 119).



[(Fig._2)TD$FIG]

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011

Press Coverage (number of entries/year)

Fig. 2. Press coverage of the Turner Prize (1984–2011; from Newsbank).


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exhibition as the central feature of the TP. Since 1991, the annual Turner exhibit is held in a grand room atthe Tate Britain. Attendance at the annual exhibition went up significantly during the 1990s.14

Media coverage: The TP exhibit quickly became the exhibition that everyone—curators, critics, and layaudiences—made a point of seeing. It was thus pivotal in the production of debates and arguments aboutthe relative merit of shortlisted artists. During the early years of the TP, reactions ranged betweenconsternation and amusement; in 1984, for example, the Guardian snidely described the TP as ‘‘merelyconfirming the continuing cultural dominance of the New York art world’’ (Stout and Carey-Thomas, 2007,p. 78). In 1991, the permanent exhibition setting led to increased media coverage and to fierce discussionof the merits of the shortlisted artists. Owing to media interest, the TP, in short, became a ‘‘nationalobsession’’ (Thornton, 2007). The early 1990s also saw the heyday of British tabloids (Taylor, 1992),15

which found innovative ways to cover the TP by turning it into a horse race, for instance, complete withodds and betting. Since the 1990s, the TP exhibit has sustained bitter and memorable controversiesinvolving notably anti-TP activists.16 Fig. 2 shows that media coverage increased significantly during the1990s and has remained relatively stable above 2000 entries since the early 2000s.

Ceremony: In December, a two-hour evening ceremony broadcast on TV signals the end of theyearlong contest. The televised broadcast of the ceremony started in 1991 with the new partnershipwith Channel 4. The winner is currently awarded a check for £25,000 by a celebrity host. A much-discussed event in the art world, the prestigious and glamorous event is populated with London art,political, and business celebrities, and it receives extensive press coverage.

3.2. Mechanisms of the TP

We understand from the TP’s inchoate and disorganized beginnings that the prize struggled beforeit found its stride during the 1990s. During the 1980s, the TP aimed to bring the Tate closer to sites of

14 Attendance figures are not available for each year, but existing data indicate a significant increase. In 1999, attendance was

133,000, up from 57,000 in 1996. The record was reached in 2011 with 149,000 (Stallabrass, 1999, p. 172; Wu, 2003, p.170; see

also Art Council England, 2012).15 The Sun’s circulation peaked between 1994 and 1996 at almost 5 million daily readers (Source: News International

Circulation Reports Archive).16 The TP regularly attracted protests and mockery. For instance, the Stuckist art group staged several demonstrations against

the prize, described as an ‘‘ongoing national joke’’ (http://www.stuckism.com/realturner.html). First awarded in 1999, the

Turnip Prize gained national media attention as a satire of the TP. The Turnip Prize, it was announced, ‘‘is a crap art

competition. . .You can enter anything you like, but it must be rubbish’’ (http://www.stuckism.com/links.html).


http://www.stuckism.com/realturner.html

http://www.stuckism.com/links.html



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contemporary art production. Strategic as this ambition originally was, the format of the TPincrementally changed, by trial and error, reflecting practical adaptation to strategic issues regardingthe fairness of the competition.17 From 1991 onward, the TP was no longer a reward for pastachievement but a complex valuation device intervening in the production of market value. Theintervention of the TP is conceptualized under the mechanisms of brokerage, deliberation andinstitutional labeling. Each mechanism accounts for a specific form of coordination that is bothconducive to higher prices and shorter valuation process.

3.2.1. Brokerage

From the description of the features of the TP, we see that the TP did not arise as an exogenous forceoutside of the existing British art world. Instead, it originated as an eminently endogenous forceembedded locally in the London art scene. One could argue that the TP provided little that did notalready exist. But the true innovativeness of the TP lies elsewhere. First, as described above, the artmarket is organized around a strict division of labor between intermediaries. Art museums (curators),galleries (dealers) and art newspapers (critics) each account for a specific gatekeeping activitycorresponding to a different way of appraising and valuing art. The TP disrupts this usual division oflabor by producing congruence and arranging an ingenious coordination of intermediaries that aretypically held separate. By bringing together a great diversity of profiles in its jury, the TP thusproduces a significant departure from institutionalized valuation routines. The jury of the TP is a site oftension between the diverse intermediaries deemed legitimate to appraise art. This form ofcoordination recalls the mechanism of dissonance defined by Stark as the ‘‘ability to keep multipleevaluative principles in play and to exploit the resulting frictions of their interplay’’ (Stark, 2009, p.15). Speaking on esthetics, critic Robert Hughes famously declared that ‘‘mixture is greatness’’(Hughes, 1993, p.98). But mixture is also highly innovative when it comes to the institutional systemin charge of appraising art. As a result, instead of sending specific, discrete signals to the market, the TPproduces composite signals resulting from the frictions between the different profiles combined in thejury.

Second, by coordinating a diversity of intermediaries, the TP also concentrates in time what themarket would have done incrementally through the successive intervention of dealers, critics andcurators. The sequence of transactions that typically makes valuation a long process is thusconsiderably shortened. Therefore, the TP helps young contemporary artists accumulate a broaddiversity of signaling properties and high volume of information and reputation that would otherwisetake years to acquire.

We conceptualize the mechanism of brokerage at the intersection of the logics of coordination andconcentration. By coordinating and concentrating the great mismatch of different intermediaries andtheir corresponding market interests in a short period of time, the TP increases the likelihood of rapidsuccess because it put its nominees at the front of the pack, on all fronts, and calibrates them tonavigate different milieus and different audiences. The TP thus redefines the cognitive map of the artmarket and short-circuits the usual timing of valuation. Overall, by conferring an eclectic, compositemarket identity, the TP allows fast market ascension and hastened, rather than deferred, commercialsuccess.

3.2.2. Deliberation

Unlike other prizes, the TP mobilizes a great deal of non-expert inputs during its yearlongcompetition. We have described above the yearly Turner exhibition as the catalyzing agent formassive media coverage and large crowds of visitors. The originality of the TP consists in itsincorporation of an official jury as well as a chorus of controversies and large art crowds. In thisprocess, the influence of non-expert opinion (media coverage and lay audience attendance) becomesindiscernible from the authority of expert opinion (the jury). It is somewhat unsurprising, then, that in

17 Although the TP administrators engaged in efforts to adapt the features of the TP to the set of practical and logistical

constraints they encountered, there is no evidence, however, that the change in the format of the TP reflected a conscious

ambition to re-organize the British art world. The evolution of the TP shows that what a market device does and how it changes

are connected to eminently practical issues and are potentially decoupled from the intentionality of its creators.




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contrast to the secretive and opaque culture of dealership (Velthuis, 2005), the prize has beencriticized as tacky and loud. However, by encouraging media coverage and large attendance, the TPchannels public deliberation into a powerful mechanism of valuation.

It does this by harnessing and encouraging public conversation, gossip, and controversies thatcreate narratives and scripts that the market transforms into value (Heinich, 2000). In an influentialessay, Nicolas Bourriaud, a French art historian, argued that contemporary art is primarily distinctivefor its acquisition of meaning through the participation of an audience rather than by the internaldialog between the artwork’s features and the opinion of experts (Bourriaud, 2002).18 In a marketcontext deprived of consensual value standards or clear definitions of what qualifies as art, attendancefigures and media coverage can thus serve as a live and inductive experiment of how much an artist isworth, and buyers may find appeal and derive value in owning a work of art that has drawn largepublic attention.19 Economic theories of utility suggest that buyers who have limited time to makeinformed judgments based on specialized information may be ready to pay a premium for an artworkendorsed and ‘‘realized’’ by hundreds of thousands (Klamer, 1996).20 Overall, deliberation accounts fora sophisticated mechanism of exposure that increases the appeal of nominated artists and thelikeliness that their work will fetch high prices.

3.2.3. Institutional labeling

Finally, owing to its perennial nature, the TP both identifies individual artists and, over time,creates a shared identity among nominees. The TP confers cohesion and unity among a restrictednumber of selected artists. The 107 artists nominated to the TP between 1984 and 2011 became‘‘Turner Prize artists.’’21 Institutional labeling recreates commensuration between artists and bringsdifferentiation to a contemporary art world traditionally resistant to the kind of ‘‘formal imperatives’’(Griswold, 1981) typical of the modern art world (style-based or subject-based forms ofcategorization). By building a sense of community, the TP helps dissipate the cognitive uncertaintyinherent to the contemporary art market, and it supplies reassuring signals to buyers and increases theprice that an artist can command. Overall, by providing institutional labeling, the TP gives artists acomparative advantage over non-TP artists by making them more immediately identifiable andretrievable and, ultimately, more immediately valuable.22

3.3. Mechanism distribution across the three periods of the TP

Since the features of the TP have evolved over time, we examine how each mechanism may havevaried in strength over time. Based on the configuration of features in place during each of the threetime periods, we show how the three mechanisms of brokerage, deliberation, and institutional labeling

were either enabled, shut down, or weakened. Before presenting the results of our analysis, we delimitthree periods that we hypothesize will prove crucial to testing the effect of the TP on the marketsuccess of an artist.

18 For instance, Tracey Emin’s infamous installation My Bed gained considerable attention in 1999 while exhibited as one of the

shortlisted works for the TP. My Bed notably faced public outcry over the fact that it featured blood-stained bed sheets, condoms,

empty vodka bottles, worn panties, and other detritus. The combination of media uproar and audience curiosity generated by

the TP’s annual exhibition, however, proved instrumental in launching Tracey Emin’s career. My Bed was eventually bought by

Saatchi in 2000 for £150,000. This work went on to become her most famous iconic work and, it is argued, the world’s most

famous sculpture (see Nigel Reynolds, 2006).19 A good example regarding the lack of consensus on what qualifies as art is the flurry of controversies that emerged out of

Martin Creed’s installation ‘‘The Lights Going On and Off.’’ The TP winner in 2001 set up an installation at the Tate consisting of

an empty room with the lights going on and off every five minutes (see Gibbons, 2001).20 ‘‘There are ten million people on the face of the planet that are willing to pay ten pounds to see it, so it is worth a hundred

million pounds’’ (Thornton, 2009, p. 37).21 TP 2003 winner Grayson Perry declared: ‘‘I have a kind of quadruple-barreled name now, Grayson-Perry-Turner-Prize-

winner, because that’s how I am always introduced’’ (Stout and Carey-Thomas, 2007, p. 29).22 Arguably, institutional labeling goes both directions: in a way similar to a ‘‘Giuffre effect’’ (Giuffre, 1999, p. 817), artists are

not only consecrated by the TP, but they also contribute to the consecration of the prize through market success and exchange

relations. Our thanks to a reviewer for this suggestion.




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3.3.1. 1984–1990: disorganized beginnings

The first period delimitation in 1990 is quite straightforward. It designates the suspension of the TPover problems of format and the bankruptcy of its corporate sponsor. The TP had an inconsistent formatand problems with nomination criteria. On the one hand, the stable format of the jury guarantees that thebrokerage mechanism was active. On the other hand, because of the lack of commensuration betweenartists and logistical problems with the exhibition space, and because the concluding ceremony was notyet broadcast on TV, discussion of the prize was largely confined to art world experts. Thereforedeliberation was likely inactive. Moreover, in its early years, the TP had nominated too few and toodifferent artists to create a sense of unity between nominees. In addition, early nominees wereconsiderably older, with already established reputations, and thus less likely to benefit from institutional

labeling as TP nominees. We hypothesize a mixed or weak effect of the TP on trajectories of these artists.

3.3.2. 1991–1999: golden age

The choice of 1999 as the second period delimitation is not motivated by internal changes in the TPformat but by the evolution of the contemporary art world writ large since 2000. Under its new formatbetween 1991 and 1999, the TP concentrates all three mechanisms. Stable jury composition, a newexhibition space, younger and more comparable artists, increasing media coverage, and audienceattendance enable all three mechanisms. We expect a strong effect of the TP during what is expectedto appear as the golden age of the TP.

3.3.3. 2000–2011: mainstream Turner Prize

Since 2000, the TP has been well established in mainstream culture. As a sign of itsinstitutionalization, a significant number of prizes modeled after the TP began to promote youngcontemporary artists in the late 1990s. Burgeoning art prizes contributed to the TP’s increasinglegitimacy and its first mover advantage. But this new wave of contemporary art prizes alsointroduced competition into the once oligopolistic prize industry dominated by the TP. If the TPremained the most prestigious art prize, it was no longer unique. The innovative signaling propertiesthat the TP had so far bestowed upon British artists became more equally distributed amongcomparable contemporary artists competing for market recognition. Therefore, although the effect ofincreasing prize competition on the TP is complex and requires careful consideration,23 we do expectan overall weaker market appeal for young British contemporary artists than in the previous period.Another hint at the institutionalization of the TP is the reduction of media coverage in the early 2000safter more than a decade of uninterrupted expansion (see Fig. 2). Media coverage nonetheless remainsat a high level and nomination age lower than between 1984 and 1990. Thus, given the weakenedcentrality of the TP (a consequence of the Tate’s growing detachment from the TP following theopening of the Tate Modern in 2000), and the period’s rather stable media coverage, we expect stillactive but weakened brokerage and deliberation mechanisms in the early 2000s. Overall we expect asignificant effect of the TP in this period, albeit weaker than during 1991–1999. Fig. 3 summarizes themechanisms at play in the three periods.

23 Growing competition between prizes since the late 1990s does not mechanically translate into reduced Turner Prize

influence on nominees’ careers. Prize proliferation can produce mixed outcomes depending on whether we approach it from the

perspective of the TP’s recruitment base, valuation mechanisms, or market appeal. First, a distinctive feature of the new art

prizes emerging in the late 1990s is their national eligibility criteria. Like the TP, the French Marcel Duchamp Prize and the

German National Gallery Prize for Young Art target only national or country-based artists. Each prize has effectively nominated

a significant portion of national artists (73/93, 39/49, and 9/27 were British, French, and German, respectively). Since the TP is

unchallenged in the United Kingdom, and thus remains the main prize promoting British contemporary art internationally, the

TP is therefore relatively immune from increasing prize competition in its task of recruiting and promoting promising young

British contemporary artists. Second, at the level of valuation mechanisms, increasing competition is not any more likely to

disrupt the TP’s brokerage, deliberation, and institutional labeling mechanisms. As the market device approach indicates, the TP

acquired strength and meaning locally from within the British art scene. Therefore, the emergence of new prizes does not

compromise the three mechanisms that we anticipate make the TP consequential. Finally, increasing competition is potentially

more damaging at the reception level. The comparative advantage of TP artists decreases as the emulation of the TP around the

world makes its innovative value signals more democratic and more equally distributed. Therefore, in a crowded prize industry,

TP artists are no longer endowed with unique signaling properties when they enter the marketplace or are sold in the resale

market. We return to the question of competition in the conclusion of this paper.



[(Fig._3)TD$FIG]

1984 1991 2000 2011 TP 1 TP 2 TP 3

Mechanisms

Institutional

Labeling

Public

Deliberation

Brokerage

Turner Prize (TP) Periods

Active

Partially Active

Inactive

Fig. 3. Mechanism distribution across the three Turner Prize periods.


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4. Data and methods

4.1. Data

Our dataset consists of the entire population of TP nominees and winners, as well as the records oftheir artworks sold on the international art auction market, including at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Sincethe mid-20th century, artworks are exchanged primarily through two selling procedures: auctions orposted prices. Posted prices have typically been used by galleries in the primary market, whileauctions have generally concerned the secondary—resale—market. This distinction has weakenedsince the 1990s, owing to the increasingly central role of auction houses in art valuation (Velthuis,2011). We here focus on the auction market, where the most important artworks are sold.

We collected the auction sales data from the Blouin Art Sales Index, which includes the auctionresults from over 350 auction houses worldwide dating from 1922 to the present. This database doesnot report unsuccessful bidding or bought-in orders. From the total number of TP nominees between1984 and 2011 (107), we have excluded 14 nominees who either were non-artist nominees or did notsell their art in the auction market until 2011.24 Our final dataset includes 93 nominees and 8543transactions from 1966 to 2011, from which we created a panel dataset consisting of 1041(artists�years) observations. We collected additional artist information from various resources,including exhibition catalogs and the Tate’s and galleries’ websites.

4.2. Dependent and independent variables

In order to test the three mechanisms of Turner Prize, we included three period variables asindependent variables and eight control variables.

4.2.1. Dependent variable

The dependent variable of our model is the maximum price reached each year by each TP nomineethroughout his or her career in the auction market. We use maximum price instead of annual turnoverat auction or yearly average prices. Since these latter two measures reflect the overall selling power ofan artist, they do not acknowledge the great variance among artists in terms of number and quality of

24 When artists were shortlisted several times, we use the first nomination year to determine which TP period they belong to.

We did not count them twice.




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artworks sold in auction. In contrast, success on the art market is traditionally measured in terms ofrising prices rather than rising sales (Velthuis, 2005, p. 162). Auction house price estimates are alsoconsidered as unbiased predictors of realized prices (Ashenfelter and Avowd, 2002). Thus, we takemaximum price as a proxy for the market prominence and potential of an artist. 25 Although thehighest selling works may vary across years, we keep our focus on the artist level, since the TPnominates artists and not artworks.26 All maximum prices are in thousand dollars.

4.2.2. Independent variable

One common approach for assessing the time dependent nature of causation in institutional theoryis to use period variables that allow the effects of variables to vary over time (Schneiberg and Clemens,2006; Sutton and Dobbin, 1996). We use a similar design by dividing the history of the TP into threeperiods that reflect our hypotheses on the presence or absence of the three mechanisms of brokerage,

deliberation, and institutional labeling. The independent variable of this study indicates in which of thethree periods the artist was nominated, either 1984–1990, 1991–1999, or 2000–2011. Since our focusis on market trajectories and careers, we use panel data structure to show whether auction pricesincrease after nomination, controlling for variables that traditionally increase value over time. Wecreate three period dummies for each TP period, where ‘‘0’’ accounts for the years until nomination(including the year of nomination) and ‘‘1’’ the years after nomination.

4.2.3. Control variables

Gender: We control for the potential effect of an artist’s gender on price. We created a binaryvariable and coded it as ‘‘1’’ for male and ‘‘0’’ for female.

Death of artist: Several TP nominees have recently passed away. Dead artists’ artworks exist as afinite body of works and in limited supply, which can increase price. We here control for potentialeffects of an artist’s death on the price of artwork. We create a binary variable coded ‘‘0’’ if the artistwas alive at the time of the auction and ‘‘1’’ otherwise.

Major genre of artist: It is conventional knowledge in the art world that genre affects the pricingrange of an artwork. We indicate for each artist the major genre in which he or she contributed:painting, sculpture, installation, video, photograph, and others. Artists can belong to several genres.We created five dummy variables, with ‘‘painting’’ serving as the reference category.

Auction house: We control for the location where the auction took place by creating a variable withfour area categories: Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries, using ‘‘UK’’as reference category.

Winner of the TP: Our database includes both TP winners and nominees. With this variable wewant to see whether the TP made a larger difference for the winner (1) than for the nominee (0). Thisvariable does not account for the period of nomination (our independent variable).

First solo exhibition year: Artists’ auction price records start when their first artwork was sold inauction. Because an artist’s career may well have started years before their first auction sale, artists,upon nomination, may show different levels of seniority in the art world and different levels ofvaluation. In order to control for seniority and whether artists were already established at the timeof nomination, we take the year of first solo show as a proxy for the length of the artist’s workingperiod.

Major galleries in the UK: Galleries are key intermediaries in the art world (Velthuis, 2005). Artistsmay achieve higher prices as a result of the perceived influence of their supporting galleries.Exhaustive historical data on gallery representation was not available. We therefore controlled forwhether TP nominees exhibited at any of the following galleries: White Cube, Saatchi, Lisson, andAnthony D’Offay. These four galleries are the only galleries to appear in the 1990 UK’s top ten artgalleries by newspaper coverage (Robertson, 2005, p. 27).

Young British artists (yBas) membership: We created four yBas membership binary controlvariables that we included in four alternative regression models (see Table A1 in Appendix). Although

25 We also used average prices as an alternative dependent variable for checking the robustness of our model. Results show the

same direction and significant results as maximum price.26 We converted £ and s into $.



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Table 2Estimates for random-effects models of Tuner Prize nominees on art market success.

Model 1 Model 2

Coefficient Coefficient

SE SE

Gender 269.284* 346.886*

(132.773) (134.924)

Death of Artist �226.248 �119.453

(350.177) (354.327)

Major Genre of Artist (Sculpture) �412.789** �381.889**

(130.479) (130.100)

Major Genre of Artist (Installation) �290.734 �268.811

(262.100) (264.096)

Major Genre of Artist (Video) �554.206* �630.611**

(239.272) (238.711)

Major Genre of Artist (Photo) �386.161* �336.345*

(167.988) (167.713)

Major Genre of Artist (Others) �315.309 �390.761

(274.951) (274.232)

Auction House (Europe) �152.259 �231.503

(294.028) (293.600)

Auction House (East Asia/Middle East) �252.336 �280.550

(245.928) (245.731)

Auction House (US) 157.829 137.153

(121.042) (120.928)

Winner of Turner Prize �195.289 �221.224

(129.802) (129.226)

First Solo Exhibition Year �4.753 �15.548**

(4.070) (5.492)

Major Art Galleries in UK 458.018*** 376.814**

(116.462) (120.213)

S & P 500 Index �8.412** �8.148**

(2.689) (2.677)

TP period 1 (1984–1990) 254.265

(177.077)

TP period 2 (1991–1999) 756.041***

(199.989)

TP period 3 (2000–2011) 550.766*

(227.870)

Constant 10,429.784 31,321.357**

(8083.669) (10,856.008)

Number of artists 93 93

Average observation per artist 11.2 11.2

Number of observations 1041 1041

Note: Coefficients are in thousand dollars.* p<0.05.** p<0.01*** p<0.001


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no official yBas list exists, art historians identify the development of the yBas phenomenon with astring of seminal shows held in London between the late 1980s and late 1990s (Rosenberg, 2010).These exhibitions include Freeze (1988), East Country Yard (1990), Modern Medicine (1990), Brilliant(1995), the six eponymous yBas I–VI exhibitions held at the Saatchi Gallery (1992–1996), andSensation (1997). We created four variables to reflect several possible yBas membership definitions:Early yBas (before 1991), Brilliant & Sensation, yBas I–VI, and an all-inclusive variable.

S&P 500 Index: Finally, we also controlled for the potential conflation of art price levels with overalleconomic growth. We use the S&P 500 Index’s annual return data as a proxy for overall marketperformance to control the effect of changing demand for art on art prices.




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4.3. Statistical analysis

The data consists of a panel of auction sale observations. The full sample includes 1041(artists�years) observations. When dealing with a panel data structure, most researchers use fixed-effect or random-effect to account for changes between and within artists over time. Unlike pooledcross-sectional models, fixed-effect or random-effect models can adjust for the problem ofautocorrelation and produce more accurate estimators (Wooldridge, 2001). One way to accountfor unobserved heterogeneity when data have a panel structure is to estimate random-effects modelsthat account simultaneously for within- and between-effects information (Baltagi, 1995). Since wewant to assess price evolution for each artist before and after TP nomination (within-effect), but alsodifferences between artists nominated in each of the three periods in consideration (between-effect),we used random-effect models. Table 1 summarizes descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations ofall variables. Table 2 shows the results of the panel regression with random-effect models on theoutcome of TP nominees.

5. Results and discussion

Table 1 shows some relatively low correlations among every (or each) variables and all VIFs arebelow 4. We also tested groupwise heteroskedasticity for possible multicollinearity in a time-seriescontext. The hypothesis of equality of variances is soundly rejected. Looking at control variables, wesee that Gender, Major Genre, Major Galleries in the UK, and S&P 500 Index variables yield significantresults in both models of Table 2. The fact that artworks by male artists are more expensive thanartworks by female artists confirms the less favorable dynamic of valuation for women in the artmarket. For instance, only 30 per cent of work in museums are by women (Thornton, 2009). Thatsculpture, video, and photo genres significantly underperform painting (the reference category)indicates that art genres still affect the pricing range of artworks at auction, even in the contemporaryart world. The highly significant effect of galleries on art prices confirms their central role asintermediaries on art valuation. Finally, the negative effect of the S&P 500 Index on auction pricesindicates that investing in British contemporary art represented a relevant investment alternative—ahedge—when the stock market declined, an interpretation consistent with the recent literature on therelationship between art and other asset classes, notably equity prices (McAndrew, 2010; Mei andMoses, 2002). The Winner of the TP variable yields no significant effect, a confirmation that theexposure provided by the TP’s public deliberation mechanism matters more than the actual result ofthe competition. In other words, it is the taking part that counts. The Auction House variable is also notsignificant. Notably, it indicates that there is no significant difference in the maximum prices garneredat auction by British artists at home or in the U.S., a confirmation of the international dimension of thesuccess of young British contemporary artists.

As expected under the logic of deferred success, the First Solo Exhibition Year variable increasesauction prices in the full model (Model 2 in Table 2). For every additional year of seniority (measuredby the year the artist had their first solo show), an artist’s value increases by $15,548. It confirms thatrecognition accumulated over time translates, incrementally, into commercial success.

In the full model, independent variables accounting for each TP period show a varied influence.Artists nominated during the first TP period do not show significant market value change afternomination. In contrast, the second TP period has a strong and significant effect on the prices of artistsnominated between 1991 and 1999. The coefficient is 756,041, meaning that the maximum marketvalue of these artists increased $756,041 after nomination.27 Finally, artists nominated during the lastTP period also seem to have benefitted from the TP, though the effect is weaker (550,766) than duringthe second TP period.

Our main hypothesis regarding the varied effect of the TP is confirmed. As expected, the first TPperiod—during which only the brokerage mechanism was active—does not show significant effect onmaximum price in auction. Results for the second period strongly support the idea that all three

27 Since Damien Hirst has significantly higher auction prices than other TP2 artists, we also ran the analysis after omitting

Hirst. Results for the second TP period did not change; the variable coefficient was only slightly reduced.




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mechanisms work on increasing the market price of focal artists. The very high coefficient indicatesthat many artists nominated during the second period of the TP had an artwork that sold in auction forabove $1 million. The third period shows a 27%-lower coefficient than during the second period, thussupporting the proposition about weakened mechanisms due to the institutional changes over time.

It is worth remembering that the artists nominated during the second and third TP periods areyounger and less established than those nominated between 1984 and 1990. Artists nominatedduring the first TP period had their first solo exhibitions in 1968, on average (in 1988 and 1992 forthe second and third TP period, respectively). Thus, using the coefficient of First Solo Exhibition

Year, we are able to calculate that artists nominated during the second and third TP periods arevalued, on average, $310,960 and $373,152 less than artists nominated during the first TP period.28

It appears that the additional valuation provided by a TP nomination during the second ($756,041)and third ($550,766) periods more than compensates for shorter work periods and lack ofseniority. Since we have controlled for variables known to increase valuation, we are confidentthat these results confirm that the TP allows for unusually high market prices for relatively youngcontemporary artists.29

In their study of the origins of the modern art market, White and White (1965) argued that theFrench academic system organized around state-controlled forms of reputation and publicappropriations was outperformed by the ‘‘dealer-critic’’ system, which proved more flexible andresilient in the face of the increasing production of and demand for art. In our analysis we demonstratethat the valuation mechanisms anchored in the TP (brokerage, deliberation, and institutional labeling)dealt innovatively with the difficulties inherent in the valuation of young contemporary artists. Thisconfirms our general hypothesis that the TP provided new avenues to confer value upon a promisingnew generation of British artists emerging in the 1990s. If it were not for the existence of the TP, youngBritish contemporary artists would have displayed less unusual trajectories, as the valuation processmay have taken many more years or decades. As expected, the influence of the TP differs across thethree periods we have delimited, thus confirming our intuition that the changing features of the TPproduced changing influence over time. We do not suggest that the valuation mechanisms anchored inthe TP are solely responsible for the differences in auction prices, though. Other factors such as artist’sseniority and gender and exhibition at a prestigious gallery are also significant in explaining between-artists differences.

6. Conclusion: hastened success and the question of posterity

This article demonstrates that the emergence and institutionalization of the Turner Prize made thecareer of young British contemporary artists more conducive to hastened, rather than deferred,success, thus disrupting the typical pace of art valuation. Hastened success represents a radical sourceof change in the art market and poses the question of posterity. Under the logic of deferred success, anincremental valuation process ensures that the young artist is tested by time and guarantees relativestability of value over time. In the case of young British contemporary artists, early-career marketsuccess raised suspicion about these artists’ long-term prospects.30 Only some 30 years after theinauguration of the TP, it is still too early to confirm that the success of TP artists will prove lasting overthe long term. But young British contemporary artists are still valued over their Americancounterparts (Galenson, 2005). And devaluation, if it occurs, will more likely mean price depreciationthan flat-out crash, for the simple reason that their initial valuation was not a bubble and did not

28 These calculations are from (1988–1968)*$15,548 and (1992–1968)*$15,548, respectively.29 Our four alternative models including yBas membership variables yield two significant results (see Table A1 in the

Appendix). First, in all cases the main effect of the three TP period variables is unchanged: period 1 is not significant, period 2 and

3 are significant, and period 2 has a larger coefficient than period 3. Second, and quite unexpectedly, our four yBas membership

variables display coefficients that are negative or not significant. We interpret this result as evidence that the market valuation

of TP nominees is more dependent on their institutional relation to major galleries and nomination period than their identity as

yBas. This result confirms the decisive role of galleries in the valuation of young artists.30 ‘‘More people than ever are buying contemporary art, and chances are that most of it is historically insignificant. It may be

personally meaningful, intelligent, even edifying, but in the long term many of these collections will end up looking like the

tattered silks of an age gone by or the archeological remains of an ancient garbage heap’’ (Thornton, 2009, p. 99).




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reflect market irrationality but resulted, instead, from the intervention of three innovative valuationmechanisms.

The main finding of the present study indicates that young British contemporary artists’ unusualvaluation pattern largely results from a different relation between value and price—a relation rootedin the Turner Prize’s three innovative valuation mechanisms: brokerage, deliberation, and institutional

labeling. By bringing together a great diversity of profiles in its jury, the TP coordinated andconcentrated a great mismatch of London-based art intermediaries and their corresponding marketinterests (Brokerage). Via its annual exhibition, the TP also served as the catalyzing agent for massivemedia coverage and large crowds of visitors, turning non-expert opinion at home (tabloid-fueledgossip and public controversies) into a live and inductive experiment of how much an artist is worth(Deliberation). Finally, owing to its perennial nature the TP was also able to confer cohesion and unityamong a restricted number of selected artists, thus building a sense of community among nominees(Institutional labeling).

Interestingly, the wave of new prizes emerging in the late 1990s combine features in whole or inpart similar to those of the TP, suggesting that the emulation of the TP made the three valuationmechanisms listed above increasingly central in value formation and diffusion in the contemporaryart world. For instance, both the Marcel Duchamp Prize and the National Gallery Prize for Young Artenforce an age limit, national eligibility criteria, and both are structured around a yearlongcompetition. Other national art prizes for young artists have also been established recently around thesame features.31 Therefore, the proliferation of new art prizes built around similar features andmechanisms is likely to make hastened success a broader phenomenon in the contemporary art world.In other words, a multipolar art prize world is likely to lift the value of new art geographies and closethe gap between young British contemporary art and other strands of contemporary art, thus makingthe success of young British contemporary artists less unusual with regard to comparable young andcontemporary artists.

Proliferating art prizes and diversity in prize features and formats call for additional research onprize performance in a competitive environment. For example, a recent study on the effectiveness ofmotion picture awards shows that jury composition is the main factor determining awardeffectiveness and the performance of award winners in the motion picture industry (Gemser et al.,2008). In a similar vein, a qualitative and qualitative investigation of a broader number of prizes couldassess the relative merits of configurations of prize features (and their corresponding valuationmechanisms) on prize nominees’ careers.

This study of the Turner Prize yields another important finding about the dynamics of art valuationand the meaning of local and national boundaries in a global art market environment. Previousresearch has established that artists’ nationality still accounts as a powerful predictor of economicsuccess (Quemin, 2002). We show that the TP’s three valuation mechanisms acquired strength andmeaning locally from within the British art scene. As such, the success of the TP—and the lateremergence of other national art prizes—speaks to the strength of local ties and tightly knit networks ofart intermediaries in the discovery, valuation, and international diffusion of young artists. Therefore,and counter-intuitively, a ‘‘geographical reading’’ of the art market still offers a valuable perspectiveon art valuation and preference formation at a time when art transactions are growing increasinglyinternational in scope and nature (Griswold, 2008; While, 2003).

This research also demonstrates the usefulness of a market device approach in understandingmarket valuation and patterns of value change. First, a market device approach reveals that artvaluation mechanisms acquired meaning and strength from within the concrete and practicalorganization of the TP and its evolution since 1984. Second, a market device approach allows us tocapture patterns of change that we demonstrate make the TP more or less consequential over time.Third, our study of the TP shows that, instead of reflecting the intentionality of its creators, theemergence and institutionalization of the TP occurred via an unplanned adaptation to a set of practicalconstraints specific to the British art world. Overall, the resilience and adaptability of the TP cast arenewed understanding of the emergence, evolution, and effect of valuation mechanisms. We hope

31 These include, but are not restricted to, the Vincent Award (Netherlands, 2000), the Kandinsky Prize (Russia, 2007), the

Skoda Prize (India, 2010), and the Young Belgian Art Prize (Belgium, 2013).




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that additional research on market devices will confirm and refine our analysis of their valuation rolein contemporary markets.

We return finally to the case of Damien Hirst whose unprecedented—and highly successful—moveto consign his art directly to an auction house on September 15, 2008, without the mediation of agallery, had some arguing that the role of dealers, critics, and other market gatekeepers may havestarted to evaporate (Taylor, 2011, p. 15). In line with the claim that prices may prove a better valueindicator than art critics (White, 2002), Aspers and Beckert (2011, p. 13) also speculated: ‘‘Aresymbolic meanings to be understood as the leading sources of value today?’’ Our article suggestsotherwise: the disintermediation thesis is far more plausible for the niche market of establishedartists than for the much broader market for young contemporary artists in which cognitiveuncertainty is maximal and artworks are not always tradable in market terms. Focusing onchallenging price decisions typical of early market careers, this article demonstrates that theemergence and institutionalization of the TP proved a decisive factor in young British contemporaryartists’ unusual valuation pattern. The intervention of gatekeepers and the production of symbolicmeaning still heavily influence artists, especially in the early stages of their career. But as theemergence and institutionalization of the TP indicates, these mechanisms are changing—producingdepartures from institutionalized routines and unusual market trajectories by enabling fastascension to high levels of success as opposed to the slow and progressive conversion of artistic valueinto market value.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented, in 2012, at the Culture & Society Workshop atNorthwestern University. We are grateful to workshop participants for their insights and to workshopdirector Wendy Griswold for having built this precious community of scholars interested ininterdisciplinary approaches to culture. We also wish to thank Bruce Carruthers and Wendy Espelandfor their perceptive comments on a previous draft and Jeremy Freeze for suggestions on how toimprove the statistical analysis.

Appendix. Additional analysis

Table A1Estimates for random-effects models of Tuner Prize nominees on art market success with yBas variables.

Early yBas Sensation_Brilliant yBas I–VI yBas all

Coefficient Coefficient Coefficient Coefficient

SE SE SE SE

Gender 309.417* 316.228* 356.373** 320.579*

(135.340) (136.347) (135.896) (135.283)

Death of Artist �53.145 �108.482 �132.944 �103.686

(354.297) (354.176) (355.157) (353.820)

Major Genre of Artist (Sculpture) �419.510*** �388.043** �386.431** �388.004**

(130.565) (130.081) (130.363) (129.917)

Major Genre of Artist (Installation) �167.065 �232.511 �252.247 �200.311

(266.326) (265.013) (265.629) (265.674)

Major Genre of Artist (Video) �823.700*** �667.825** �617.974** �693.766**

(249.610) (239.820) (239.721) (240.211)

Major Genre of Artist (Photo) �330.236* �313.607 �324.798 �309.831

(167.270) (168.276) (168.875) (167.913)

Major Genre of Artist (Others) �412.016 �327.755 �416.124 �328.692

(273.606) (277.194) (277.584) (275.373)

Auction House (Europe) �230.658 �219.761 �235.179 �233.972

(292.796) (293.516) (293.756) (293.116)



Table A1 (Continued )

Early yBas Sensation_Brilliant yBas I–VI yBas all

Coefficient Coefficient Coefficient Coefficient

SE SE SE SE

Auction House (East Asia/Middle East) �274.332 �277.456 �277.285 �287.979

(245.071) (245.584) (245.869) (245.350)

Auction House (US) 149.910 151.642 136.171 153.106

(120.699) (121.229) (120.977) (120.967)

Winner of Turner Prize �268.994* �244.097 �235.330 �266.291*

(130.203) (130.022) (131.404) (130.712)

First Solo Exhibition Year �11.645* �13.802* �15.588** �12.931*

(5.683) (5.608) (5.494) (5.623)

Major Art Galleries in UK 448.708*** 405.788*** 383.299** 411.002***

(123.098) (121.648) (120.739) (121.116)

yBas Membership �426.583** �231.066 154.035 �313.364*

(165.823) (152.473) (257.820) (149.430)

S&P 500 Index �8.075** �8.112** �8.136** �8.043**

(2.670) (2.675) (2.678) (2.673)

TP period 1 (1984–1990) 217.125 217.293 261.014 200.342

(177.181) (178.638) (177.492) (178.644)

TP period 2 (1991–1999) 826.887*** 777.403*** 752.277*** 799.506***

(201.334) (200.359) (200.151) (200.731)

TP period 3 (2000–2011) 527.922* 530.189* 545.882* 525.358*

(227.420) (228.130) (228.088) (227.815)

Constant 23,684.000* 27,929.170* 31,385.480** 26,224.660*

(11,226.000) (11,077.640) (10,859.950) (11,107.190)

Number of artists 93 93 93 93

Average observation per Artist 11.2 11.2 11.2 11.2

Number of observations 1041 1041 1041 1041

Note: Coefficients are in thousand dollars.* p<0.05.** p<0.01*** p<0.001


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Pierre Penet is a 5th year Sociology PhD candidate (ABD) at Northwestern University and SciencesPo. Paris. In his dissertation,Calculating and Governing Risk in Times of Crisis: Sovereign Risk and Credit Ratings in the 1930s and 2010s, he analyzes the production ofinternational law and of market governance standards in times of crisis.

Kangsan Lee is a PhD student in Sociology at Northwestern University. His current research deals with sociology of valuation andevaluation and the emergence and diffusion of social signals, status, reputation, and fame, with a particular empirical emphasis oncreative industries. He received his M.S. and PhD candidacy in Management and Organization from Yonsei University, Korea and hisM.A. in Sociology from Northwestern University.






















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Prize & price: The Turner Prize as a valuation device in the contemporary art market

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