What, all of them? - plus ca change
This is probably becoming a well-worn theme, i.e. moaning about journos who contrast the Better Way Things were in Past Times compared to the Degeneracy of the Present.
And while I am not an art historian or a historian of collecting, I have been around enough galleries and museums to be just a tad sceptical of the claims advanced in this article about connoisseur collectors of the past: [A] coterie of rich collectors who tried to buy great and important pictures, rather than, as now, chasing what was obvious. The men, and they were often men, did their own research, took risks, and bought what was unknown, unrecognised, and unfashionable.
Well, maybe some of them were, but I have oft been visited by the thought, perambulating galleries of what are now classified as 'studio of', 'pupil of', 'school of', that 'boy, you were really taken for a ride on your Grand Tour, weren't you?'
And I would not, myself, lean too heavily on the connoisseurship of e.g. Berenson when Duveen's Wikipedia entry expresses itself somewhat cynical about some of his attributions and the role of marketing Art as conveying Class to New Money (paging Mr Veblen, perhaps).
I really don't think billionaires of the past were any less ignorant than those of today, and if the sale of the Salvator Mundi at an inflated price was 'the result of a brilliant marketing campaign', well, we are inclined to consider that that is in ye grand old tradition. This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2688876.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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