Elmgreen & Dragset »Prada Marfa« 2005 © Elmgreen & Dragset

When, in 2008, Elmgreen & Dragset depicted the art world as an inaccessible Prada Store in the middle of the American desert, German artist Antonia Hirsch had already fixed the distorted geography of the art market in 23 carat gold leaf. Her visualization of ArtNews Top 200, an annually published list of the most important art collectors worldwide reaffirms the fact that art has always been an exclusive business: Hirsch struck off from the world map each country that failed to represent at least two art collectors in the ARTnews list. What remained was the West - and the rest was simply empty paper. After the Internet databank Artprice announced this year that China had replaced the English art market as the second largest in the world, it would seem obvious that Hirsch’s world map, if realized once again in 2011, would look different.Continue Reading ...