Extraordinary Art Dealers offers a fascinating journey through the intricate world of art dealing, covering its development over three centuries and the figures whose influence has helped shape both the art market and aesthetic taste.
This book documents the shifting landscapes of taste, commerce, and power. It comprises thirty essays on critical art dealers from the eighteenth century to modern times, disclosing the usually hidden forces behind how art reaches collectors and institutions.
The essays collected represent various personalities, from respected connoisseur dealers placing themselves as tastemakers and “cultural architects” to keen salespeople and opportunistic traders. Romantic idealists, aesthetic innovators, and sometimes outright rascals are among them.
What results is a varied landscape of a profession so glittering and yet so riddled with moral complexity, in which astute connoisseurship often enough is intertwined with shameless profiteering?
By setting the profession in its historical perspective and following the developments that paralleled changes in the conceptions of art in society, Extraordinary Art Dealers establishes illuminating connections with modern practices in the art trade. In the book’s six chapters, a usually neglected aspect of art history is closely scrutinised to show how dealers have played an essential role in influencing not only artists and collectors but also the cultural canon per se.
This book will appeal to the cultural enthusiast, art historian and all those who enjoy the behind-the-scenes stories of the art world. It offers a complex view of the profession’s challenges and successes for those considering or already embroiled in the art dealing profession.