The state of today's art collectors

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Thanks for posting this interesting article, Marcus. The Galerie St. Etienne is a great gallery, focussing mainly on German Expressionism and has a wonderful collection of Kathe Kollwitz .

I would just like to make two points: firstly, if, and it seems very much so, the art collecting world appreciates the value of money more than the value of the art then it is a good thing that artwork is so expensive. If, for example, a Kathe Kollwitz sold for $50, it is probably likely that it will get coffee spilled on it, but if it sold for $50,000 then it would be kept as safe as it's monetary equivalent, wouldn't you agree? One sound reason for artists not to under price themselves.

Secondly, it is not the academics that are making a new canon so much as deconstructing the old "white, male, Eurocentric" one. It is true, as Jane Kallir points out, this academic trend has been around for a decade or two and has some validity in the democratic and philanthropic western world.

But she says:

Although this change in orientation has literally opened up a whole new world of aesthetic possibilities, it has discouraged academics from making qualitative judgements. Scholarship in areas that are useful to the marketplace, such as provenance and authenticity, has flourished, but overall connoisseurship has declined.

So it seems that this postmodernist ideal is showing its flaws, or more people are becoming aware of how this trend is leading to a dead end as much as Modernism seemed to be with it's Minimalist conclusions. One perhaps should be aware of the major objections to a "white, male, Eurocentric" artistic art - for example, presenting the female nude as object rather than subject, but it does not mean that an artist has to avoid the nude altogether. One should be aware because, perhaps, there may be some validity here. But it is not a question of either painting according to a set of rules or in opposition to those rules. There are more that two choices.

This article is hopeful, intelligent, and we should be pleased that such an important gallery has such a fair, aesthetically-championing outlook.

[Sharon Knettell]

Although we think of French portraiture and painting of the Baroque period as something quite beautiful, not all the elite were connoisseurs. Louis the 14th's choice as court painter was Pierre Mignard. He was a sloppy excutant, becoming the most fashionable portraitist of his time. He also did saccharine Madonnas and mediocre decorative work. He was so popular among the elite he became one of the richest artists in history.

He has not been restored to his former Glory.

I have posted two of his works, followed by two of Philippe de Champaigne's pieces, who labored under his shadow.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

It really is such a pleasure to look at that last one!

[Sharon Knettell]

It seems to me that the great movements of life and art go on with or without us. There is really nothing to be done.

Manet simply got bored with classicism and decamped from Couture's studio to do his own thing. Degas classically trained, was interested in color as color and portraying life as he saw it. Tubed paint came along in 1841 and freed the artist from the studio.

Each era has it's own reasoning to do art in it's own peculiar way, good bad or indifferent.

"If you can do something about it, don't worry, If you can't do something about it, don't worry." Shantideva, 8th century Indian Buddhist sage.

[Sharon Knettell]

This discussion reminds me of a book I just read, Susan Cheever's "American Bloomsbury". It details the lives of an astonishing group of American thinkers and writers that lived in Concord, Massachusetts in the mid 1800's; Thoreau, Emerson, Louisa May Alcott and Hawthorne to name a few. This group had a profound effect on American literature and is considered to be it's genesis. Cheever goes on to speculate that somehow, groups of geniusses seem to coalesce in a particular area in a particular time; Paris in the 18-19th Century, London in the 18th century and homely Concord in the mid-eighteenth century.