From the Desk
Dispatches
Short surveys from the desk: a movement re-read, a regional market repriced, an auction result worth explaining.
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Japonisme and the rewriting of European composition
Japanese prints reached Paris as cheap packing material and left as a collecting category with its own dealers and journ
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The first Venice Biennale in 1895 and the international show
Venice opened an international art exhibition in 1895 with a jury, prizes, a sales office and a scandal. The format it i
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Paul Durand-Ruel and the machinery behind impressionism
The dealer who backed the impressionists invented most of the tools the trade still uses: the solo show, the exclusive c
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The 1901 Van Gogh show in Paris and the price reset
Eleven years after his death, a Paris gallery hung around seventy Van Gogh works in one room. The show changed what a ge
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Wiener Werkstatte, 1903: design becomes a product
Founded in Vienna in 1903, the Wiener Werkstatte turned workshop craft into a branded product line with marks, showrooms
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The 1905 Salon d'Automne and the making of fauvism
One room at the 1905 Salon d'Automne produced a hostile phrase in a newspaper, and the phrase became a movement with a n
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The Salon d'Automne of 1903 and the second market
Paris already had two official salons when a third opened in 1903. The Salon d'Automne took the autumn slot, gave decora
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Ver Sacrum and the printed page as a sales channel
The Vienna Secession ran its own journal from 1898 to 1903, and Ver Sacrum did more for the spread of the style than the
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The Vienna Secession: how a walkout became a brand
In 1897 a group of Viennese artists resigned from the official association and built their own hall, journal and exhibit
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Art Nouveau at the 1900 Paris Exposition
The 1900 Exposition Universelle turned Art Nouveau from a dealer argument into a product line. How Bing's pavilion, Nanc
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How contemporary painters reinterpret classical genres
Still life, portrait and interior are four hundred years old and still in daily use. What living painters keep from thos
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Still life and genre scenes: why quiet subjects hold value
The French academy ranked still life and genre scenes at the bottom and history painting at the top. Three centuries lat
Our surveys are written independently. Where a gallery or platform sells the work we describe — RakovGallery among them — the link carries a partner or affiliate label.
