EDITORIAL Suhail Malik ///
Critique as alibi: moral diferentiation in the art market

It is a commonplace that the rapid expansion in the volume, depth and price levels of the artmarket in the boom years of the early mid-2000s reflects the expansion and asset inflation of the growth of financial capital since the mid-1990s. In September 2007 The Art Newspaper presented a chart compiled by Art Market Research indexing how, after the collapse of the late-1980s boom in both the art market and the Dow Jones and FTSE 100, the art market gave similar rates of returns as these stock markets from mid-1992 to 1995, smaller returns and rates of returns for 1995 to 2003, then a relative increase in returns from art compared to the rise in stock prices from mid-2006 to mid-late 2007.