Diana J Kostyrko
My monograph entitled The Journal of a Transatlantic Art Dealer: Rene Gimpel 1918-1939 was published with Harvey Miller Publishers, London/Turnhout, Dec. 2017, 360 pages, 45 b&w images, index, bibliography, chronology, genealogical tables, select database of artworks and their provenance.
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This article examines the genesis of the journal and its significance as an art-historical document.
advice: don’t copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction”.’
Conference Presentations
THE LEARNED Franco-American poet and critic, Édouard Roditi, a “feared reviewer of literary works”, predicted that René Gimpel (1881–1945)’s Journal d’un collectionneur would be a futur classique. Three years later, in 1966, Roditi was forced to concede that it had “failed to impress influential French critics of literature or of the arts” and, instead, it seemed to appeal to a few historians and gossip-columnists. Now, amid a small avalanche of timely studies on Euro-American art dealers, their clients and colleagues—harbingers and arbiters of the transatlantic art market—, perhaps Gimpel’s journal finds its natural home.
Book Reviews
As a whole, Vignon proceeds thematically rather than chronologically. Part one concerns the commercial strategies and tricks of the trade, including the stagecraft of display, with emphasis on the working relationship between the Duveens and the decorators Carlhian, Alavoine & cie and Charles Allom. The second section of the book develops into a survey of consumption, wherein a stunning litany of prices is rolled out for objects sold by the Duveens to a familiar set of wealthy American clients, and this is where the rich promise of the first half of the book flatlines.
This article examines the genesis of the journal and its significance as an art-historical document.
advice: don’t copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction”.’
THE LEARNED Franco-American poet and critic, Édouard Roditi, a “feared reviewer of literary works”, predicted that René Gimpel (1881–1945)’s Journal d’un collectionneur would be a futur classique. Three years later, in 1966, Roditi was forced to concede that it had “failed to impress influential French critics of literature or of the arts” and, instead, it seemed to appeal to a few historians and gossip-columnists. Now, amid a small avalanche of timely studies on Euro-American art dealers, their clients and colleagues—harbingers and arbiters of the transatlantic art market—, perhaps Gimpel’s journal finds its natural home.
As a whole, Vignon proceeds thematically rather than chronologically. Part one concerns the commercial strategies and tricks of the trade, including the stagecraft of display, with emphasis on the working relationship between the Duveens and the decorators Carlhian, Alavoine & cie and Charles Allom. The second section of the book develops into a survey of consumption, wherein a stunning litany of prices is rolled out for objects sold by the Duveens to a familiar set of wealthy American clients, and this is where the rich promise of the first half of the book flatlines.