True colors : the real life of the art world / Anthony Haden-Guest.

Includes three separate sections of plates including color and black and white illustrations. The plates can be found beyween pages 88 and 89, 152 and 153 and finally between 280 and 281. These plates include illustrations of noted artists/performance artists including Cindy Sherman, Matthew Barney among others.

Includes index (pages 329 - 344)

Introduction / The birth of the contemporary art market at the Scull Sale, Sotheby Parke-Benet, New York, on October 18, 1973 -- The avante-garde and its enemies --

One. Racing Demons / Joseph Kosuth has an idea -- Dennis Oppenheim and Michael Heizer head for the wild blue yonder -- Chris Burden and Bas Jan Ader go boating -- Piero Manzoni goes to the bathroom and other adventures in the last days of modernism --

Two. I'm painting, I'm painting again / Surviving in the lean time and back to the easel --

Three. new spirits / Julian Schnabel leaves the kitchen and America discovers Europe --

Four. the heat & the cool / Wild Style -- Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and the Lower East Side -- Cindy Sherman is not quite herself -- the selling of Jeff Koons --

Five. boom Jasper Johns and Vincent Van Gogh meet Saddam Hussein --

Six. the dark side / The bombing of Rob Scholte --

Seven. More / The anger of Donald Judd

Eight. the saviors / Damien Hirst bisects a cow -- Matthew Burney climbs the walls -- Janine Antoni loses important body parts -- and other next big things --

Nine. Ends / James Turrell's volcano and other millenial signs.

"The last quarter of a 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 1980's, the newly vigorous art market transformed the role of dealers and collectors to give them unprecedented power as taste makers 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." -- from book jacket