Arrangement in Business: The Art Markets & the Career of James McNeill Whistler - Hardcover

Petri, Grischka

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3487146304 ISBN 13: 9783487146300

Publisher: Georg Olms Verlag AG, 2011

Synopsis

Ever since John Ruskin dismissed James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) as a coxcomb asking exaggerated prices for bad paintings, the American artist has been labelled an entrepreneurial self-promoter. For the first time, this study examines in detail the economic side of Whistlers entire career. The artists professional trajectories are traced with the help of a database recording prices for his works between 1855 and 1903, making the structure of his international lifetime markets transparent. The book analyses Whistlers exhibition strategies in London, Paris and New York, and the artists relationships with patrons and institutions. Whistlers transactions with art dealers, commercial galleries and collectors are examined, and business aspects of his artistic decisions are discussed together with commercial implications of the Aesthetic Movement. Whistler emerges as a first modernist successfully making up strategies of distinction. A complement to the existing Whistler catalogues raisonnes and biographies focusing on the aspect of art economy, this study is a valuable reference work. 'Arrangement in Business: The Art Markets and the Career of James McNeill Whistler' has been awarded the Lempertz Prize for Art History.

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Review:

"Particulary intriguing and new is Petri's energetic compilation of market information; each chapter commences with a section called 'statistics and figures', interpreted by the author with the help of a variety of graphs. In more general terms, this investigation into the art world in which Whistler operated is an important contribution to the increasingly sophisticated literature on Victorian art networks. 'Arrangement in Business' adds fresh evidence and international scope to such classic works as Harrison and Cynthia White's 'Canvasses and Careers', of 1965, and Paula Gillett's 'The Victorian Painter's World, of 1990." -- Martha Tedeschi, Print Quarterly, XXIX, 2012, 3 "For instance, the relationship of etchings to portraits, with their specific exhibitions and patrons, is particularly convincing. The analysis of seriality in Whistlers art is original, and suggestive of methods used to brand some of societys other consumables. The performative nature of Whistlers art in relation to ist audience, to exhibitions and art criticism, is well documented and persuasively presented. Had this book been published twenty-five years ago, it might have had an influence in the real world, rather than merely a common topic for academic discussion. Conceived to compete with the Google age, to be scanned as much as read, it nevertheless contains a mine of valuable information, which is supported by a bibliography running to thirty-two double-column pages, as well as more than three thousand footnotes the knowledge of several lifetimes." -- Robin Spencer, The Burlington Magazine, CLIV, December 2012

About this edition

• Publisher: Georg Olms Verlag AG
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 3487146304
• ISBN 13: 9783487146300
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 790