考研英语二真题手译【2010-2019】.pdf

2010 年
Text 1
The longest bull run in a century of art-market history ended on a dramatic note with a
sale of 56 works by Damien Hirst, “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever”, at Sotheby’s
in London on September15th 2008 (see picture). All but two pieces sold, fetching more
than ā70m, a record for a sale by a single artist.
It was a last hurrah. As the auctioneer called out bids, in New York one of the oldest
banks on Wall Street, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy.
The world art market had already been losing momentum for a while after rising
vertiginously since 2003. At its peak in 2007 it was worth some $65 billion, reckons
Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics, a research firm — double the figure five
yearsearlier. Since then it may have come down to $50 billion.
But the market generates interest far beyond its size because it brings together great
wealth, enormous egos, greed, passion and controversy in a way matched by few other
industries.
In the weeks and months that followed Mr Hirst ’ s sale, spending of any sort became
deeply unfashionable, especially in New York, where the bail-out of the banks coincided
with the loss of thousands of jobs and the financial demise of many art-buying investors.
In the art world that meant collectors stayedaway from galleries and salerooms. Salesof
contemporary art fell by two-thirds, and in the most overheated sector — for Chinese
contemporary art— they were down by nearly 90% in the year to November 2008.
Within weeks the world ’s two biggest auction houses,Sotheby’s and Christie’s, had to
pay out nearly $200m in guaranteesto clients who had placed works for salewith them.
The current downturn in the art market is the worst since the Japanesestopped buying
Impressionists at the end of 1989, a move that started the most serious contraction in the
market since the secondworld war.
This time experts reckon t