Collectors, Exhibitions, and Art-Dealers in Europe (1863-1920)

Lecture 1 – Setting the Scene: the Role of Academies of Art and Art Dealers in the Display and Distribution of Modern Art

In this lecture, we will look at the dominating role of art academies in Europe in the distribution of art and the development of artistic tastes in society. We will address such important questions as the role of art dealers and exhibitions in the development of artistic tastes of society. We will also examine the first independent exhibitions in London and Paris, which transformed the agitation for exhibition reform into a fundamentally new understanding of the art exhibition as an ideological platform.

Lecture 2 – Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922): Pioneer Dealer of the Impressionists

Despite the popularity of Impressionism today, the ground-breaking shifts that occurred in French painting at the end of the nineteenth century were not immediately embraced by collectors, dealers, or the public. A vital figure in the rise of Impressionism was Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922), a Parisian picture dealer who championed the new style of painting, worked to cultivate artistic taste, and developed novel commercial strategies to promote this innovative group of artists. This talk aims to retrace the critical years from the late 1860s to 1905 when the dealer worked to inspire and sustain the Impressionist artists and to sell their work throughout Europe and the United States.

Lecture 3 – Picasso and the creation of a market for modern art: Sergei Shchukin, Paul Rosenberg and Henri-Daniel Kahnweiler

In this lecture, we will discuss the impact of art dealers, collectors, and exhibitions on the establishment of Picasso as one of the most important modern artists and the influence of Shchukin’s and Morozov’s collections of French impressionists and post-impressionists and exhibitions of French art on avant-garde artists in Russia. We will discuss the following questions: How private collections and exhibitions transformed the reception of Picasso? How far Picasso’s art dealers influenced the works that collectors bought, and therefore contemporary taste? And ultimately – how far has the history of art been determined by art dealers?

Lecture 4 – Crisis, speculation, and snobbery: The First World War and its effects on art dealers, exhibitions and collectors

When the war broke out, Franz Jourdain, president of the Salon d’Automne, is supposed to have shouted, ‘At last, Cubism is done for!’ But Cubism suffered no more than other varieties of painting from the war. It soon became clear that in wartime anything could become an object of speculation. The confiscation and liquidation of the property of German nationals flooded the market with art and made it difficult to maintain high prices at a high level. At the same time, the most remarkable avant-garde exhibitions were organised in Russia. In this lecture, we will discuss the effect of WWI on artists and art market in France, Britain, Russia, Germany, and Austria.

 

Reading week, date TBC

 

Lecture 5 – French Modernism in the Russian Empire

The first lecture will explore the influence of French art on artists who lived and worked in Russia. At the beginning of the 20th century, artistic developments in Paris were crucial for the liberation of Russian art. Many Russian avant-garde artists, including Kazimir Malevich, had never traveled to Paris but readily absorbed the works by Cézanne, Monet, Gauguin, Matisse, and Picasso brought to Russia by merchants and collectors Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin.

Lecture 6 – Samuel Courtauld and his Collection

One of the finest collections of Impressionism anywhere in the world was assembled by the English industrialist and philanthropist Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947). During the 1920s, he acquired seminal works by all of the major Impressionists, at a time when Impressionism still struggled to gain acceptance among English public institutions. After a decade of collecting, Courtauld gave the majority of these remarkable works to establish The Courtauld Institute of Art and Gallery in London. This lecture will explore Courtauld’s collection and his role in promoting Impressionism in the United Kingdom.

Lecture 7 – Secessionism in Munich and Vienna

Vienna 1900 – birth of modernism: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoshka, Sigmund Freud. As this lecture examines the key characters, their reformist exhibition strategies, and above all their rallying cry for a ‘freedom of expression’, we will question what precisely such claims meant. That the answer is far from clear is itself a hallmark of the sheer experimental energy of a movement that was equally enamored with both the beautiful surface and the subversive depths of human instinct.

Lecture 8 – Munich, centre of the German avant-garde: Kandinsky and the Blaue Reiter

Munich, in the first fourteen years of the twentieth century, was the location of an extraordinary collection of innovative artistic voices. Artists from Russia and across Europe who were living and working in Munich formed avant-garde groups (first the NKVM and then the Blaue Reiter group) which challenged the conservative artistic status quo and introduced radically new art. The groups were not defined by a particular style; rather, they constituted artists working in diverse styles and media who were united by a common philosophical approach: a desire to express an inner truth. This lecture examines the development of these avant-garde groups through the prism of their defining exhibitions.

You will learn about all areas covered in each lecture, including:

• The Role of Academies of Art and Art Dealers in the Display and Distribution of Modern Art.
• Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922): Pioneer Dealer of the Impressionists; and the critical years from the late 1860s to 1905, when the dealer worked to inspire and sustain the Impressionist artists and to sell their work throughout Europe and the United States
• The impact of art dealers, collectors and exhibitions on the establishment of Picasso as one of the most important modern artists and the influence of Shchukin’s and Morozov’s collections of French impressionists and post-impressionists and exhibitions of French art on avant-garde artists in Russia
• The First World War and its effects on art dealers, exhibitions, and collectors
• The influence of French art on artists who lived and worked in Russia
• Samuel Courtauld’s collection and his role in promoting Impressionism in the United Kingdom
• Secessionism in Munich and Vienna; birth of modernism: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoshka, Sigmund Freud
• The centre of the German avant-garde: Kandinsky and the Blaue Reiter
  Munich; the development of these avant-garde groups through the prism of their defining exhibition