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Alternative Objects - Alternative Markets
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Italian Renaissance art, objects, and even the idea of Italy itself figured heavily both in the dynamic international art market and in the eyes of the general public. The alternative objects that were actively dispersed and collected -- authentic works, pastiches, Renaissance-inspired counterfeits, and reproductions -- in the diverse media of paint, plaster, terracotta, and photography, had a tremendous impact on visual culture across social strata. These essays examine less studied aspects of this market through the lens of just a few of the countless successful sales of objects out of Italy.
Alternative Objects - Alternative Markets
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Italian Renaissance art, objects, and even the idea of Italy itself figured heavily both in the dynamic international art market and in the eyes of the general public. The alternative objects that were actively dispersed and collected -- authentic works, pastiches, Renaissance-inspired counterfeits, and reproductions -- in the diverse media of paint, plaster, terracotta, and photography, had a tremendous impact on visual culture across social strata. These essays examine less studied aspects of this market through the lens of just a few of the countless successful sales of objects out of Italy.
This book examines the art markets of the Global South while questioning, based on the heterogeneity of the selected contributions, the very idea of its existence in the context of the global art market. Gathering new research by recognized scholars, you will discover different markets from the so-called Global South, their structure, the external determinants affecting their behavior, their role in the art system’s development, and how they articulate with other agents at the local, regional, and international level. In this publication, an important wealth of research on various African countries stands out, providing an unprecedented overview of the markets in that region.
This volume originates from the TIAMSA conference The Art Market and the Global South: New Perspectives and Plural Approaches, held in Lisbon in 2019.
This volume originates from the TIAMSA conference The Art Market and the Global South: New Perspectives and Plural Approaches, held in Lisbon in 2019.
This book examines the art markets of the Global South while questioning, based on the heterogeneity of the selected contributions, the very idea of its existence in the context of the global art market. Gathering new research by recognized scholars, you will discover different markets from the so-called Global South, their structure, the external determinants affecting their behavior, their role in the art system’s development, and how they articulate with other agents at the local, regional, and international level. In this publication, an important wealth of research on various African countries stands out, providing an unprecedented overview of the markets in that region.
This volume originates from the TIAMSA conference The Art Market and the Global South: New Perspectives and Plural Approaches, held in Lisbon in 2019.
This volume originates from the TIAMSA conference The Art Market and the Global South: New Perspectives and Plural Approaches, held in Lisbon in 2019.
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Abstract
The paper takes up the issue of international trade in art from the Global South perspective. Leaving on the margin the most important countries for the matter in question, i.e. the United States of America, some European countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland) and China, attention is focused on the emerging economies of the southern hemisphere: South America, Africa, India, and South-Eastern Asia. The aim of the paper is to identify the value, directions, and indicators of international art trade in Global South countries. The analysis is based on the UN Comtrade database and International Trade Center (ITC) statistics. The export and import of products classified as commodity group 97 (works of art, collectors’ pieces) and antiques are analyzed.
An analysis of value of the international art trade is presented. Special attention is given to trade balance indicators (negative or positive). Based on the data gathered, the directions of international art trade are identified in the selected Global South countries. Furthermore, the concentration of exporting countries and the average distance between them and their destination countries is presented; the same is done for importing countries. The measure of concentration is based on the Herfindahl index (also known as Herfindahl–Hirschman Index, HHI, or sometimes HHI-score). The source of the data for the geographical distance between two countries is CEPII (Centre d’Etudes Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales) data. The paper also has a cognitive and empirical character. The analysis of data enables to achieve new perspectives that can be observed in the current art trade seen from the Global South. Advanced visualizations of the geographical structure of the international art trade in the discussed regions are also presented in the article.
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American museums in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries prominently displayed collections of modern plaster casts, particularly of classical and Renaissance sculpture, but modern copies of historical paintings were less frequently seen in public institutions. An exception to this may be found in the Western Gallery of Art, a museum of modern copies of Old Master paintings founded in 1897 in Kansas City, Missouri by local newspaper editor William Rockhill Nelson. Nelson particularly admired Italian art, especially from the classical and Renaissance periods, and sought to educate the public on its intellectual, moral and spiritual benefits by founding an art museum in Kansas City. He knew, however, that masterpieces akin to those he admired in the museums of Florence and Rome were rarely available on the art market of the time, and those that did come up for sale were beyond his financial ability to purchase. He therefore set out to assemble a museum of what was, to Nelson, the next best thing - copies of famous Italian paintings and sculpture. Nelson visited the Pisani Gallery in Florence in 1896 and acquired most of his new copy collection from there. Pisani Gallery, founded by Luigi Pisani in the 1870s, sold hand-painted copies of the most famous paintings housed in European museums, reproduced by contemporary Florentine artists working directly for Pisani and sold in replica frames. As the first art museum in Kansas City, the Western Gallery of Art and its Pisani Gallery copies became a beloved institution and cultural stalwart for the city’s residents. Upon the opening of the new Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in 1933, however, the Western Gallery’s copies created confusion among the public, who were unable to discern between them and the new museum’s exceptional collection of original masterpieces, and the copies were permanently uninstalled in 1943. For the time it was on display, however, this collection of modern copies with a Florentine provenance helped shape the Kansas City public’s understanding and appreciation of art, and became the forerunner of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
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Italy for Sale
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Raffaella Frascarelli and Valerio Rocco Orlando’s ongoing research South of Imagination recognizes in the cultural horizon of the Global South the social resource required to establish an unconventional educational experience at Matera in a state-owned building granted to the artist for the next thirty years. The Epistemologies of the South by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and the Southern Question by Antonio Gramsci foster this process. A series of workshops involving independent and multidisciplinary communities of artists Adrian Paci in Shkodër (Art House), Wael Shawky in Alexandria (MASS,) Yto Barrada in Tangier (Cinémathèque de Tanger) represent the educational action able to draw on the unconventional knowledge of the southern demo- diversities.
The paper investigates the sociocultural and economic perspectives of the Global South new art markets, their effects on the interaction between aesthetics and economy, and their influence on the development of independent cultural processes. The endeavors of these new art markets to create and redistribute aesthetic, sociocultural, and economic values in Southern Europe, Middle Eastern countries and Africa are assessed along with the “glocal” dimension and the molecular collaboration of artists collectives who, while disentangling and deconstructing the myth of individual creativity, are transforming the art market as well.
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George Eliot’s Romola (1863), a carefully researched work of historical fiction set in Savonarolan Florence, appealed to many Anglo-Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With its detailed descriptions of Renaissance Florence, Romola served as a sort of guidebook, its narrative providing both real and virtual travelers with an informative and easy-to-follow itinerary. But an especially popular edition, published by Tauchnitz in Leipzig beginning in 1863, further engaged travelers, who extra-illustrated it with photographs of the popular art and monuments that were part of Elliot’s narrative. Examination of dozens of these volumes, as well as contemporary sales accounts, diaries, letters, and popular press, reveals that some travelers chose each photograph individually, while others bought pre-assembled sets; the volumes were then fitted with decorative endpapers and specially bound with stamped and gilded parchment or vellum in local stationary shops. Less expensive than a painting or sculpture, and more personalized and portable, these volumes allowed travelers to carry home Renaissance Florence, as a souvenir of their journey to be paged through for years, as a statement of their erudition to share with others who might not make such a journey themselves, and, of course, as a reflection of the market for Italian Renaissance art and culture in the late nineteenth century.
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Italy for Sale
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This chapter discusses the extent to which the Turkish art market has been internationalized by focusing on the case of the Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair, the major art market event in the country. We examine this case as an instance of a broader phenomenon: the internationalization of art markets in emerging economies and their contribution to the global art market. The data we draw upon mainly comes from two sources: annual catalogs providing information on artists and galleries participating in the event and the artworks exhibited, along with annual activity reports of the organization that mostly provides statistical information on the event in different aspects. Utilizing the data and the available secondary literature, we organize our discussion on internationalization around three analytical aspects: galleries and dealers, visitors and collectors, and artists and artworks. Overall, we suggest that the Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair has gained considerable ground in becoming an international art event by carving out a niche for itself in the global art scene even though its status in terms of reputation and commercial size is not analogous to the art fairs that constitute the center of the global art market.
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Plaster reproductions of sculpture and architecture constituted a significant sector of the art market in the late nineteenth century. Casts of Greek and Roman monuments dominated sales, but representatives of Italian Renaissance art were an important component. Collectors in America bought Italian works from dealers such as Oronzio Lelli in Florence, the Malpieri and Gherardi families in Rome, and Pietro Pierotti in Milan. Catalogs dating from the 1880s to the 1920s. Catalogs and sales flyers, along with records of public collections and surviving casts, serve as guides to the available reproductions of Italian works sold in Italy. This essay will concentrate on purchases of reproductions of works of Italian Renaissance art by American consumers.
American museums and schools were the largest consumers of plaster casts, and reviewing their purchases is central to understanding how the nineteenth century viewed Italian art. It was considered an important part of the education of the populace about past achievements, as well as a way of providing examples for moral development. Despite a bias in the United States against Italians and the Catholic Church, Italian works, especially from the Roman empire and the Renaissance, were admired. Plaster reproductions were purchased in large quantities to serve as moral guides and tastemakers.
Additionally, casts were a significant feature of the private world during the Gilded Age, where they reflect many of the same ideals. Period photographs, written descriptions, and occasional items still in situ attest to the popularity of casts in home decoration. Among the best sellers for both private and public venues, as indicated by their constant availability in catalogs and their frequent survival, were many works by Donatello, as well as the panels of Luca della Robbia’s Cantoria, portions of Michelangelo’s Medici tombs. Dealers offered various sizes and formats.
Another noteworthy portion of privately owned casts includes those that provided study and source material for nineteenth-century artists, who bought works that appealed to them, and, conversely, were influenced by the reproductions that they owned. A reproduction of Donatello’s St. George, for example, hovered over the workshop of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907); its features haunt many of his figures.
The items that sold the best do not always correspond to what would be considered the most significant works today. The absence of casts of Donatello’s San Lorenzo pulpits in the United States, for example, suggests that the image of Donatello in the nineteenth century was less dramatic and more secular than the one we now hold.
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Italy for Sale