[caption id="attachment_2332" align="alignnone" width="560" caption="Veronique Chagnon-Burke teaching a class"][/caption]
A few weeks back, there was a great deal of interest in the success of Christie’s Yves St. Laurent sale in Paris. Combined with the falling pound in London, speculation began over the possibility of Paris replacing London as the European art center. The Times of London featured an article Recession Threat to London’s Place in the Art World, on this topic. Then more recently The Times Online featured a blog piece on the current enthusiasm for art in Paris. The movement of art centers (and art markets) is something which can also be examined through an analysis of the historical reasons for these movements. Therefore, I thought it was a fascinating topic to discuss with Prof. Chagnon-Burke.
In this first part of our conversation on art centers, Prof. Chagnon-Burke looks at what elements have come together in the past to give rise to an art center.
VÉRONIQUE CHAGNON-BURKE: We have to begin by looking historically at what makes an art center. If we consider past centers of art, such as Paris in the 19th century or New York in the 1940s-1950s, what made an art center was a combination of factors. One of these was of course the presence of artists. For example, In Paris in the 19th century, artists came to seek better training. These artists came from the US, all over Europe, including starting at the beginning of the 20th century from Russia, and Eastern Europe. In Paris, artists found what they needed to develop, not only were there schools, but there was the café society in the 1860s and 1870s, which of course continued well into the 1920s, where people could meet up and talk about art. Later in the 20th century, the center of the art world changed and many artists came to New York because they were escaping Nazi Germany, or World War II. But beyond this kind of forced migration, if we look at New York, it continued to remain a center for art. Artists kept coming here from all over the world, because they are attracted to the city, in part because of the energy there and the dynamic of the street culture. An art center must have this element of cosmopolitanism and internationalism, and it must be a place of exchange, dialogue and hybridity.
So, you need the artists, but you also need institutional support so artists can grow and develop. Beyond galleries and collectors, whom we will talk about next, we must consider the role played by museums in making a city an international art center. Again we could go back to the major role the Louvre played in making Paris such an attractive city for art students in the 19th century. Or we can think about the attraction of the Museum of Modern Art in the 1930s. This institution really brought attention to Modern art through its exhibition program and its collecting. It familiarized artists and the public with modern art and its history, as well as legitimized its importance. In more recent times, we must consider the impact of the Tate Modern on the London art world. If we want to think of London as a center for the international art world, the Tate Modern gave a real impetus which probably has been unrivaled by any other recent creation of a European museum. There is no equivalent. When they opened the Centre George Pompidou in Paris in the mid 1970s, the impact that it had was not so much on the actual creation of contemporary art. It was more about the way that people connected to contemporary art, because it became a cultural center where people could come to go to the library, watch a film or an exhibition, listen to contemporary music. It really changed the way that people came in contact with contemporary art. But I don’t think it really changed the way artists thought about themselves. However, I do think the Tate Modern truly brought a new kind of vitality and legitimacy to the British art scene. It was very important.
But as I mentioned before, if you need artists and museum to transform a city into an art center, you need the collectors and a support system, made mainly of art dealers willing to take risk to sustain it. The dealers themselves need critics who are sympathetic to new art. In France, think about art dealers like Paul Durand-Ruel who was the first supporter of Impressionism. He relied on modern business practices but knew how essential the role of the critics were, as they needed to convince a reluctant public of the validity of this new form of art. He went as far as to publish his own art magazine. Alfred Stieglitz would do the same and use his own publication, Camera Work, to advance the cause of modern art in America.
Many female collectors in New York - from Mrs. Havermeyer, to Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and Peggy Guggenheim – played an essential role in the domestication of Modern art in New York through their activities as patrons, collectors, and founders of museums or commercial art galleries. While Peggy Guggenheim was exhibiting her collection in her own gallery Art of this Century, she was also putting Pollock on a stipend so he could paint full time, and giving him his first solo show. That kind of support is essential to sustain an influential art center.
LILY ALEXANDER: What about the influence of collectors like Saatchi? Was that important in the making of London as an art center?
VC-B: Saatchi is such a tricky topic. He is a fascinating character who will probably hold a place in the history of collecting as the sad embodiment of the spirit of our age, and as someone of whose collecting practices we should be extremely critical of. You have to go back to the point when Damien Hirst got out of Goldsmith’s college and organized the first Frieze exhibition. It was of course the YBA that Saatchi became interested in. Hirst knew the importance exhibition had on establishing a new art movement, but he also knew that patronage and collectors were needed to support the artists’ practice. At that point everything was still very local. For a long time, the UK and London, as a center for art production, was still quite isolated from the rest of the world. Saatchi was important in terms of collecting because he did introduce new standards and he ushered in a new way of collecting, of which we may have seen the last incarnation with the edge-fund collector and their interest in as investment. But more importantly with his background in advertising he brought a new twist to collecting which until then was still a rather a rarefied practice, through an ambitious program of exhibitions, he used his collection for self-promotion, insuring too that through public display the art gained in value. This all brought attention not only to himself, but to London.
For a city to sustain a dynamic art center; it needs to have a combination of factors, the artists and their supporters, collectors, galleries, and institutions such as museums and art schools. These various actors play a role and attract people from the outside too. I believe that the kind of art center we are talking about in this interview cannot stay local. When Saatchi and the YBA put London on the international art map, it started as a local phenomenon. But did that attract young international artists?
LA: Well, that relates to my next question. The YBA had such fame and celebrity, and they came from Goldsmiths. Is the existence of institutions for arts education also important? I have talked with numerous younger artists who talked about going to Goldsmiths in the hope of trying to recapture this dream of the YBA.
VC-B: Yes, I think art education is part of that historical idea of an art center. If you think of Paris in the 1870s, it attracted all these international artists. And this was in part because of the academies, not just the École des Beaux-Arts, but the private academies like the Académie Julian. Throughout the late 19th century and until WWII, these private academies attracted artists from all the over the world, such as the Germans, the Russians, and the Americans. So really the educational institutions play an essential role.
The main idea is that there must be the capacity to build a community and a network of support. The artist’s community can begin at a very young age – from frequenting the same studio, or going to the same art school. But it can come a little bit later, as with those artists who came to Paris, to London, or to New York as young adults after having gone to school in their respective countries. Then they can meet through workshops, studio visits, cafes, or salons such as Gertrude Stein’s Salon in turn-of-the-century Paris. In New York I think one of the things that was a huge draw, beyond the famous artists in exile in the 1940’s, was that in the 1970s, Alanna Heiss with P.S.1, organized the international studio program. So P.S.1, before it became an affiliate of the Museum of Modern Art, was a place dedicated to providing artists from all over the world with a place to work. In their first show called Rooms, the former classrooms had been transformed into individual studios and the artist’s opened them to the public.
LA: So, if we look at historical precedent, in order for a place to become an art center it is necessary to have the presence of many artists. These artists cannot just be local, but they must be drawn to come from other places as well and have the chance to create a real community of artists. There must be institutional support from something like a museum. There needs to be a base of collectors and financial support. There must be energetic and successful art dealers. There must be sympathetic critics. And there should be prominent institutions for arts education.
In Part II, Prof. Chagnon-Burke takes these factors and considers what they mean for the potential of Paris, or possibly another city, to replace London as a European art center.
