Public art as a source of private profit

Charles Paul Freund | October 14, 1999

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The best thumbnail evaluation of Durand-Ruel was probably written by his contemporary Emile Zola, who included the dealer--and many Parisian painters--under pseudonyms in his mostly forgotten novel about the Paris art scene, The Masterpiece (1886). Paul Cezanne, for one, thought he recognized himself in the book, and though he had been a close friend of Zola's, Cezanne never spoke to the novelist again after the book's appearance. Had Durand-Ruel been Zola's friend, he wouldn't have spoken to him anymore, either. Here's how he is described: He "was a dealer who for some years had been revolutionizing the picture trade. He was changing the market completely by forcing out of it the collector of taste and dealing only with moneyed clients who knew nothing about art and bought pictures of shares of stock either out of vanity or in the hope that they would appreciate."

Now, Zola used to hire sandwich men to advertise his novels, so it would have been graceless for him to complain about anybody else mixing art and profit. But his argument with Durand-Ruel was about less about money than about tastemaking, and its manipulation by speculating art star-makers. The true extent of that power was arguable, and was in any event limited to a very small, if influential, elite group. What really extended the power to manipulate was the spread of public art museums, which long ago assumed the role of validating the taste of the dealers and their investor-collector clients, and which have long been instructing the public at large to pay it aesthetic obeisance.

Of course, by Zola's day, an art market had existed for some time, much to the benefit of artists and art-lovers alike: Markets set art free from what the patronage of state, church and aristocracy would make it. But the alliance of dealers, collectors, and especially museums reimposes a latter-day control--one of taste--and has the effect of turning attention to the latest plaything of a tiny group of buyers and investors. These are more than happy to use the state's museums and tax laws to advance their interests, while the museums in their turn are more than happy to display and accumulate their well-publicized acquisitions. The rest of us are supposed to wait quietly on our side of the velvet ropes, keep our voices down, and hope that we aren't approaching the creations of Chris Ofili on too warm or humid a day.