Georgina Adam's Dark Side of the Boom Exposes Art Market Excesses

Veteran art-market journalist Georgina Adam has published Dark Side of the Boom (Lund Humphries, £19.99), a follow-up to her 2014 book Big Bucks. The new work examines the art market's relative slump since 2015, focusing on excesses including the branding of art as a commodity, investment speculation, forgery, fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering. Adam highlights art's portability as a form of shadow money, enabling cross-border transactions. The book draws on legal cases, auction results, and interviews with industry insiders. It covers the growth of freeport storage, the obsession with art as investment, and litigation over copyright and authentication. Notable anecdotes include visits to Zhang Huan's Shanghai studio-factory and the gala dinner at Shanghai's West Bund art fair, where 360 guests were served elaborate dishes by choreographed servers. A chapter on China addresses its rising market, wealthy collectors, and museum-building driven by tax incentives, alongside capital flight after the 2015 yuan devaluation. Adam links freeport expansion to a shift among the ultra-rich toward tangible assets after the 2008-9 financial crisis. The review notes the book's limitation: it does not fully explain why the market remains robust despite the slump. The review appears in ArtReview's December 2017 issue.