When the art world became the art market

Michael Shnayerson’s “Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art” leaves me less impressed by the state of the art and more concerned for the fate of art. Shnayerson, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, sums up the book’s message: “Sometime in the late 1990s, a fundamental change occurred.” One word replaced another: “The art world, in all its manifestations, became an art market.”

In a well-researched narrative, drawing on scores of interviews with dealers, curators, artists, and critics, Shnayerson details this transformation. He begins in the 1940s, when