The Journal of a Transatlantic Art Dealer ( René Gimpel 1918-1939

Harvey Miller Collectors and Dealers (HMCD 2) Diana J. Kostyrko The Journal of a Transatlantic Art Dealer: René Gimpel (1918-1939) 360 p., 53 b/w ill., 220 x 280 mm, 2017 ISBN: 978-1-909400-51-1 Languages: English, French Hardback The publication is available. Retail price: EUR 130,00 print Share/Save/Bookmark The journal of the transatlantic art dealer, René Gimpel (1881-1945), is evaluated for its legacy. The transatlantic art dealer, René Gimpel (1881-1945), maintained an interwar journal for twenty-one years until, like many Jews in France, he was overtaken by radical political events. In this book, Diana Kostyrko explores why Gimpel's journal should be taken seriously as a sociohistorical document. In contextualising the journal, including its reception since first published in 1963, she intercuts art history with material culture and a sociology of modernity. Firstly setting the art dealer in context, the author examines the dominant themes which thread through the journal ¿ ranging from the escalation in power and status of European dealers catering to but also rivalling wealthy private collectors, to the irresistible pressure of twentieth-century modernity on collecting practices. For all those who are concerned with the European formulation of taste in the fine and decorative arts in the early twentieth century, the trend for eighteenth-century revivalism in France and North America, the acculturation of American museums, and the rise to stardom of the modern art market on the back of the auction house will find much of value here. Overall the author undertakes to distil what René Gimpel's legacy might be. Finally, she asks: was the Paris art dealer incongruously but ultimately a prophet concerned with the over-materiality of modern society, and a cultural pessimist to boot: or did he merely reflect a range of common perceptions abroad at the time? Dr Diana J. Kostyrko is an art historian and provenance researcher, and a visiting fellow in cultural history with the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at the Australian National University. Her next book, 'In Disgrace with Fortune: transatlantic courtiers and capricious patrons', concerns the short-lived phenomenon of the transatlantic art dealer. Table of Contents Preface: begins where the Gimpel journal leaves off. It includes an introduction to René Gimpel, his profession, his milieu, and the existence of the journal. Introduction: elaborates on the preface, introducing the journal¿s content, its style, its tone, with some indication of what its value might be then and now. I suggest that Gimpel¿s journal is a rare document of intercontinental cultural exchange during the interwar period, and a testament to a rich and intense connectivity between two colliding spheres of influence: Paris and New York. Chapter 1: The earliest chapters of Bombers and Masterpieces concentrate on providing a cultural context for the emergence of the art dealer as an increasingly influential component in the field of the international art market. This chapter examines aspects of the competitive nature of collecting in Paris in the early twentieth century, making links to concerns of patrimony, and noting that vignettes of typical and prominent Paris collectors are repeated successively throughout the journal, and provide a montage of collecting practices at the time. An alternative theoretical underpinning for the art object as commodity is the preliminary for a comparison of the rivalry of the enlightened amateur and the dealer. Chapter 2: continues by examining the rise of a specific genre of collecting in Europe, which was reinstated in mid-nineteenth century Paris after an extended period whe