I had planned to chop up a DayGlo abstract painting using an axe. You might call it art criticism. I called it "making kindling". It never happened. The painting was consigned to the log pile, judged noxious and unsaleable by my mother, inheritor of a modest art collection. A visiting dealer spotted the painting at The Matriarch's pad before I could do the "Here's Johnny!" thing. Shortly after, he sold it on commission to a collector for a few thousand pounds.

The dealer, an expert on lesser-known British modernists, thought the picture was worth money. As a result, someone else did too. Art, lacking practical utility, can be either worthless or priceless. The opinion of industry insiders crucially underpins both designations and all price points in between. This is particularly true for modern art, in which verisimilitude has been largely jettisoned as a criterion of excellence in response to its cheapening by photography. The power of experts to confer value reaches its zenith in the contemporary art market, the stomping ground of such former enfants terribles as Damian Hirst and Jeff Koons. Here, expert validation counterbalances the ability of living artists to expand supply.

Running a gallery or an auction house would be a licence to print money, were it possible to buck the economy. Dealers and auctioneers succeeded in this feat for a year after the credit crunch. Last autumn, like Wile E. Coyote in the cartoon, they looked down and saw that they were running on thin air. Prices for contemporary art have plunged 40 per cent since, according to one estimate. Next month's influential Frieze art fair in London should signal whether the rising tide of economic recovery is lifting prices and volumes in the art market.

Any tyro collector entering the fray at Frieze should first read The $12m Stuffed Shark by economist Don Thompson. The book wryly anatomises how dealers, auction houses and high-profile collectors confer value on art and then maintain or increase it. Professor Thompson sees the contemporary art industry as a machine for building brands that help collectors feel good about paying large sums for a pickled elasmobranch. Expensive artworks are positional goods for the super-rich, he argues, signalling membership of that group and superiority to the merely wealthy. It is misguided to complain that, at $5.6m (€3.9m, £3.4m), a Koons sculpture of Michael Jackson cuddling his chimp Bubbles, is overpriced. Were it not excessively expensive, it would not be desirable to collectors.

However, such stratospheric prices, like Rome, are not built in a day. According to Prof Thompson, a successful London or New York dealer should be able to sell the work of a promising new artist for £3,000-£6,000 a pop. If demand supports a second and third show, prices rise to £10,000-£12,000 per work. A superstar dealer - such as White Cube in London or the New York-centred Gagosian empire - will multiply these prices appropriately.

The imprimatur of a good dealer is well worth the 50 per cent sales commission that artists bitch to their mates about. Dealers offer reputation by association. They may sell works at steep discounts to "branded collectors" such as Charles Saatchi in an extension of this strategy. The death-ray hauteur of the "gallery girls" who staff art shows supports the aura of exclusivity.

Auction houses, dominated by Sotheby's and Christie's, previously helped to ratchet up prices by guaranteeing a minimum price for collections sold when connoisseurs died, divorced or became disaffected with art. These guarantors played the same role as an investment bank lead underwriting a securities issue. The only difference was that pictures of screaming popes rather than eurobonds were on sale.

Auctioneers were left holding the baby - or rather the screaming popes - when the art market slumped last autumn. Big auction houses lost hundreds of millions of dollars on guarantees and stopped offering them. Prof Thompson tells me that many auctioneers now simply broker the underwriting of important picture sales, instead of assuming principal risk. They elicit an "irrevocable bid" from a dealer or collector, establishing a floor price at which the work will sell unless a higher bid emerges.

The auctions business is cleaner than it was: in 2000, Christie's and Sotheby's settled lawsuits alleging collusion to fix sales commissions for more than $500m. The Matriarch was among the vendors that received a welcome compensation cheque. However the art market is still pretty murky. Price transparency is low - published indices, for example, do not record private sales. Perceptions of value are manipulated by very clever, wealthy and well-connected people (not art critics, in other words).

The positive, which I should emphasise in hopes of inflating the value of my family's paintings and saving them from the chopper, is the thrill you get from some art. So I recant. Do not read Prof Thompson's book. It might put you off. Besides, if you are an investment banker, you already know all about price manipulation, brand hype and market panic from your day job.

我本打算用斧头把一幅DayGlo的抽象画砍了。你或许会把这叫做艺术批评。而我称之为"制造柴火"。但我最终没那么做。那幅画被丢进了木材堆里。我那继承了不大不小一批艺术藏品的母亲认为它让人讨厌，也卖不出去。我还没来得及模仿"约翰尼来了"（Here's Johnny，电影《闪灵》中男主角用斧子破门而入时的台词--译者注）的场景，一位来访的艺术商人就在老太太的寓所发现了这幅画。不久之后，他将这幅画以几千英镑的价格出售给一名收藏家，自己从中赚了佣金。

这位艺术商人是个行家，非常了解那些不太知名的英国现代主义画家。他认为这幅画值钱，因此，其他人也会这么认为。缺乏实用性的艺术可以不值一文，也可以价值连城。内行人士的意见对作品的去向以及历次转手的价格起到关键的支撑作用。对于现代艺术而言，尤其如此。在现代艺术市场，仿冒基本上已经不再被看作作品优秀的标准之一，因为摄影技术的发展让赝品变得越来越不值钱。专家赋予艺术品价值的权力在当代艺术品市场达到登峰造极的程度，而这个市场正是达米安•赫斯特(Damian Hirst)和杰夫•库恩斯(Jeff Koons)等"叛逆顽童"(enfants terribles)的舞台。在这里，专家的认可制衡着在世艺术家扩大供应量的能力。

运营一家画廊或拍卖行就等于得到了印钞票的执照，如果它能够逆经济形势而行的话。信贷危机之后的一年内，代理商和拍卖行成功地取得了这种效果。去年秋季，就像动画片中的歪心狼怀尔(Wile E. Coyote)，他们低头一看，才发现自己脚踩虚空。有人估计，当代艺术品的价格在那以后暴跌了40%。下个月伦敦极富影响力的弗雷兹艺术博览会(Frieze Art Fair)应该能够透出一些信号，看看日益强劲的经济复苏趋势能否提升艺术品市场的价格和成交量。

任何初入门的收藏家若要加入费雷兹争夺战，都应该先读读经济学家唐•汤普森(Don Thompson)的著作《价值1200万美元的鲨鱼标本》(The $12m Stuffed Shark)。这本书以讽刺幽默的语言剖析了代理商、拍卖行以及知名收藏家是如何赋予艺术品以价值，并在随后的日子里维持或提高这种价值的。汤普森教授将当代艺术产业视作一台制造品牌的机器，令那些支付高价买回一具盐渍鲨鱼的收藏家感觉良好。他认为，昂贵的艺术品是超级富人证明身份的商品，表明他是那个群体的成员，比一般的富人更加优越。库恩斯创作的迈克尔•杰克逊(Michael Jackson)怀抱猩猩"泡泡"(Bubbles)的雕像售价560万美元，抱怨这个价格过高可不上道。如果它不是贵得过分，收藏家就不会对它梦寐以求了。

然而，这种天价，和罗马一样，不是一天造就的。据汤普森教授称，伦敦或纽约一家成功的代理商应该有能力将有潜质新人艺术家的作品以每件3000英镑到6000英镑的价格卖出。如果对其作品的需求足以支撑第二场、第三场展览，价格便能上升至每件作品1万英镑到1.2万英镑。一家超级明星代理商--例如伦敦的白立方(White Cube)或是纽约的高古轩(Gagosian)帝国--会适当地将这些价格翻倍。

一家优秀代理商的认可是完全值得那50%的销售佣金的，虽然艺术家常常向他们的伙伴抱怨这一点。与代理商结交能够提高名气。作为这种策略的延伸，代理商可能会将作品以极高的折扣卖给查尔斯•萨奇(Charles Saatchi)这样的"品牌收藏家"。在艺术展上工作的"画廊女孩"那极富杀伤力的高傲姿态也有利于营造这种富豪权贵专享的氛围。

以苏富比(Sotheby's)和佳士得(Christie's)占主导地位的拍卖行，过去会为那些在鉴赏行家去世、离婚或与艺术界疏远时出售的藏品提供最低售价担保，从而帮助抬高价格。这些担保人扮演的角色与投资银行在证券发行时担任的主承销商角色一样。唯一的区别是，他们出售的是号叫的教皇的画像，而不是欧元债券。

去年秋季艺术品市场萎靡不振，令拍卖行吃到了苦头。大型拍卖行由于最低售价担保已经亏损了数亿美元，因此停止提供担保。汤普森教授告诉我，现在许多拍卖行仅仅担任重要画作销售担保的中间人，而不是自己承担主要风险。他们从代理商或收藏家那里探出一个"不可改变的报价"，以此确定底价，只有当价格高出底价时才会将作品出售。

现在拍卖行业比过去干净：2000年，佳士得和苏富比因涉嫌串通操纵销售佣金而吃了几场官司，最终以逾5亿美元的代价达成了和解。我母亲也是获得可观赔偿金支票的卖家之一。然而，艺术品市场依然相当阴暗。价格透明度很低--例如公开的拍卖目录并没有记录私下里的买卖。对价值的认识受到非常聪明富有且人脉广泛的人士的操纵（换句话说，不是那些艺术评论家）。

抱着使我家族收藏的画作增值，并把它们从斧头之下拯救出来的希望，我必须强调一下积极的一面，那就是你从一些艺术品中获得的兴奋感。因此我收回之前的话。不要去读汤普森教授的书。它会让你对艺术品市场退避三舍。不过，如果你是一位投资银行家，在日常工作中就应该已经对价格操纵、品牌造势和市场恐慌了如指掌。
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