| An investigation is opened by Comoedia on the crisis which rages, it is said, on painting, but by that we must understand, on the trade of certain paintings, valued too often by excessive but clever advertising. It is not likely that this shortage of buyers has diverted an artist worthy of the name from realizing the work he has designed, this outside of this spirit of negotiation that some art dealers tend to erect as a statement. of the true value of a work, which is not at all convincing. We produce some of the most typical responses from artists of different trends and published in Comoedia.
What do you think of the crisis and its causes? Do you think that the so-called "campaign against living art" had a decisive influence on it? Will painting find its condemnation in intelligence?
From Pierre Girieud: The current slump seems to me to be an immediate function of the general business crisis. It was inevitable that painting (an object of basic intellectual necessity) was very strongly affected by the slowdown in transactions. It must also be said that the same effects would have occurred, yesterday, today or tomorrow, even if the crisis were not generalized. The agio has taken over the paint market and this is where we should look for the main cause of the fall in values ??on the stock market (I mean the Hôtel des Ventes). In fact, there could only be a limited number of collectors capable of paying for paintings exceeding a certain figure; whether it is a hundred thousand francs or a million, the moment will always come when the ceiling will be reached. At this time, only the scarcity of supply could keep prices down, and this is not possible for living painters who always produce and sometimes overproduce. If we imagine that there are a hundred works of Raphael around the world for sale, we can affirm that they would not reach all the 22 million that were donated recently for a painting by this great master.
It is possible that the campaign called "against living art" also had an influence on the decline of certain paintings, but I believe rather in a coincidence than in a real action; for if, truly well conducted, it could have had effects on certain productions inflated by the merchants without the general consent of the artists, its very excess and its injustice for some real painters would have made it all the more ineffective as it did offered satisfactory replacement value.
I see no plausible reason for claiming: "Painting is dying, painting is dead!" The number of great painters, or even painters of value, has always been quite limited; at the most fertile times, we can among the first count four or five per century, and a hundred among the others, which seems to me very estimable. Our French nineteenth century confirms these figures fairly well; we belong too much to the XX ° to judge it, let us trust it.
The cult of painting (an object of first intellectual necessity) will always be served by its priests, followed by its faithful. The 5 °, 6 ° and 7 ° Arts, while waiting for the 8 °, 9 ° and 10 °, not aiming at the same goals, cannot supplant it. Let the painters work, have faith, and let the gods do it! |