How do dealers price contemporary art in a world where objective criteria seem absent? "Talking Prices" is the first book to examine this question from a sociological perspective. On the basis of a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data, including interviews with art dealers in New York and Amsterdam, Olav Velthuis shows how contemporary art galleries juggle the contradictory logics of art and economics. In doing so, they rely on a highly ritualized business repertoire. For instance, a sharp distinction between a gallery's museumlike front space and its businesslike back space safeguards the separation of art from commerce. Velthuis shows that prices, far from being abstract numbers, convey rich meanings to trading partners that extend well beyond the works of art. A high price may indicate not only the quality of a work but also the identity of collectors who bought it before the artist's reputation was established. Such meanings are far from unequivocal. For some, a high price may be a symbol of status; for others, it is a symbol of fraud. Whereas sociological thought has long viewed prices as reducing qualities to quantities, this pathbreaking and engagingly written book reveals the rich world behind these numerical values. Art dealers distinguish different types of prices and attach moral significance to them. Thus the price mechanism constitutes a symbolic system akin to language.

许多影评人曾试着诠释其浓烈的个人化视野，却始终难以企及。终于，在这本《雕刻时光》里，他记录了自己的思想、回忆，首度披露其重要作品的创作灵感、发展脉络、工作方法以及浓烈的自传内涵，并深入探究影像创作的种种问题。这些文章系长期陆续写成，惟《牺牲》一章口述于其生命最后几周。在这本艺术证言里，我们看到这位大师在“一团时间”里雕塑生命，仿佛时间奔驰穿越镜头，烙印于画面之中。