Relações apaixonadas, investimentos obsessivos: uma etnografia sobre colecionismo e o mercado brasileiro de arte contemporânea

Abstract

This is an ethnography about private art collections and the primary Brazilian contemporary arts market. More specifically, the thesis addresses a facet at the center of power and visibility in this market, one among many within the contemporary arts. A context in which artworks are bought and sold, an elite market pervaded by calculations and narrative strategies, which more than analytical are producers of this very market. The market in question is hereby presented and contextualized through an event that concentrates narratives and brings together in a single place, for a few days, different visual arts actors: the art fair. Most of all, however, this is a thesis about passion, obsession, knowledge building, and investment – the forces that drive art buyers, pervade moralities, categorize collectors and collections, move the market as a whole, and which produce and are produced by relationships between individuals and corporations, between humans and art works.