Artist Names As Human Brands: Brand Strategies in the Italian Gallery Art Market

Abstract

Considering all transactions related to modern and contemporary visual artists mediated by galleries in Italy between 2007 and 2012, we find that artist brand depends positively on talent, consolidated fame and volatile fame. These three latent characteristics have different impacts on the brand of business and non-business artists. Moreover, we find that in the Italian art market a co-creation mechanism is at work which depends on the galleries' specialization strategy in building their portfolios of artists.

Keywords: brand, value, artist, gallery, art market, hedonic regression

JEL Classification: C10, C21, Z11