In the Second Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, extended rests are said to carry equal weight in the sound structure. (From the autograph manuscript in the collection of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.)
May 6, 2020
The comprehensive, clear, and objective documentation of an artist's body of work relies on a methodical and consistent approach. What happens when the unpredictable nature of life impinges on precision? How do catalogues raisonnés weather a forced intermission? What can be made of the otherwise inevitable gaps in documentation? How can the same approach that produces the ideal catalogue raisonné be applied to the predictable and unforeseen ellipses? In this initial feature, Stephen Mack and Tracee Ng address some of these perennial and passing challenges.
Carl Schmitz, Director of Communications and Publications
The Promise and Perils of Provenance Paragraphs
Stephen Mack is a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University. He worked on the research team for the revised catalogue raisonné of Yves Tanguy's paintings, gouaches, and objects for over eight years.
In auction catalogues, museum publications, and catalogues raisonnés, artworks’ provenance histories are usually presented in list form, simply and clearly delineating the passage of an artwork from the artist’s studio to its current owner’s hands. The presentation of provenance histories as a straightforward list is sufficient for some artworks. Perhaps the artist sold the work to their dealer, who kept accurate and detailed records, and eventually sold the artwork to a happy client, who hung it in their home until they no longer felt the pleasure they got from it outweighed the financial gain it promised, at which point they consigned it to a prominent auction house, where the work sold to a collector who made their identity public and communicated openly with the compiler of the provenance history. Such a provenance history may look like this (names and circumstances are fictional):
Jerome Gallery, New York — 1945–1947 Mr. and Mrs. Albert Jones — 1947–after 1963 Private Collection, Paris — before 1975–2003 Sotheby’s London — 2003 Private Collection — 2003–
Lists like these become problematic when there are complications in the provenance history: holes in the story, confusing or inaccurate record keeping, or disputed ownership claims. If the historical record is unclear, the list acts as an ellipsis, papering over doubt and difficulty. The reader has no way to know what assumptions the compiler of the provenance history made to create this seemingly transparent list. The unadorned list suggests that no embellishment or explanation is needed.
Some institutions, such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, have begun to recognize that there are advantages to replacing the provenance list with the provenance paragraph. The same provenance history in paragraph form is able to indicate where there may be gaps in knowledge:
According to the stockbooks of the Jerome Gallery, New York, this painting was purchased directly from the artist in June 1945 and sold to otherwise unknown collectors based in New York, Sylvia and Albert Jones, in April 1947. A label on the back of the canvas indicates that they were the lenders to an exhibition in 1963. The lender to a 1975 exhibition is listed as Private Collection, Paris. Presumably this collector, or his or her descendants, were the consignors to Sotheby’s London in 2003, where the work was included as Lot 74 in their Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on October 9th and sold to an unknown private collector.
There are problems with the paragraph form, there’s no doubt. Readers may like the perceived simplicity of the list and balk at having to read a dense paragraph of text to extract the piece of information they want. Paragraphs take longer to research, write, and edit. It can feel dangerous to make gaps in your knowledge public. But the paragraph form can lead researchers and writers down myriad and unexpected paths.
In writing the provenance histories for artworks by Yves Tanguy it became clear that the simple list format did not properly or clearly identify the role of women as early patrons of the Surrealist movement and collectors of Surrealist painting. A list did not give proper due to the Kahn sisters, Janine and Simone, who inherited a fortune from their father, a rubber magnate, and were not only active members of the Surrealist group in its early days but were instrumental in financially supporting the incipient movement. Simone offered Tanguy his first contract in 1928. After World War II, she ran several galleries in Paris that sold numerous previously unknown early works by Tanguy. Her role in the history of surrealism has been largely overshadowed by her tumultuous marriage with André Breton. In the famously misogynistic art scene of the mid-twentieth century, record keepers often documented art as the husband’s property even when their partner was the active collector. Janine Kahn purchased works from Tanguy’s first solo exhibition in 1927, but some archival records describe these paintings as in the collection of Raymond Queneau, the Surrealist writer whom she married in 1928. Writing provenance histories in paragraph form allowed us a natural format to credit and explain these women’s important roles in fostering Tanguy’s career and legacy.
Blackburn, Song of an Irish Blacksmith, 1949–50. Photographs by David Smith, c. 1950. © 2020 Estate of David Smith/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
On Press, or on Hold?
Tracee Ng is the Head of Research at the Estate of David Smith. She has worked for the past several years on the forthcoming Smith catalogue raisonné of sculpture, and is the author of the definitive chronology on the artist.
Looking back at the CRSA session from CAA Chicago in February, it seems that my announcement about going to press this summer was a bit hasty! Due to the coronavirus outbreak, the publication of the David Smith catalogue raisonné of sculpture could be delayed, possibly indefinitely. As news about the virus grew more troubling in early March, all of us at the Estate were alarmed to hear about the rapid escalation of the pandemic in Italy, where our printer Trifolio is based. We contacted Massimo Tonolli, who assured us that his team was healthy and continuing to work. But by the following week, Trifolio had halted operations. The most recent news from Italy, which reported a significant drop in new cases and a gradual reopening of the economy starting on May 4, is hopeful. Even so, it is still unclear when “non-essential” businesses will be allowed to reopen. Without knowing more about how the current situation will unfold, the way ahead for us is uncertain.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with our saga, the Estate’s current project updates and expands upon Rosalind Krauss’s doctoral dissertation, which was published by Garland in 1977 as the first catalogue raisonné of Smith’s sculpture. Much of Krauss’s research, in turn, was supplemented by information compiled into a “handlist” by Jane Harrison Cone for a 1966 retrospective on Smith held at the Fogg Museum. Cone’s handlist appears to be largely based upon exhibition catalogues and periodical articles published during Smith’s lifetime, while Krauss had direct access to the Estate and those with firsthand knowledge about Smith and his work. Using the digital technology available today, the Estate has had the advantage of widespread access to information that was simply not possible in previous decades. But this has been both a blessing and a curse. While each new fact we uncover brings a particular sense of excitement and gratification, those instances rarely create a ripple in an ocean of mostly irrelevant data. The more documentation you find, the longer it takes to process, and the information doesn’t always agree, which then requires further investigation. This project has been an uplifting and frustrating reminder that a researcher’s work is never done.
My Estate colleagues and I have been working from home since March 11. Luckily, our research and inventory databases are cloud-based, allowing us to access much of our data remotely. But how can we use what is available to us to move the project forward? The foremost thought in my mind was the possibility of online publication. This move wouldn’t be a difficult one for us, since the information we’ve collected on Smith and his work is organized using Panopticon, a digital platform created specifically to publish catalogues raisonné online. Although we chose to produce a print publication, an online format can more easily feature multiple views of a three-dimensional work. This way of looking is important for an artist like Smith, who once asserted that sculpture in the round “is only a series of fronts.” Certain works, such as Blackburn, Song of an Irish Blacksmith, appear to transform as you walk around them (I’ve borrowed this example from Sarah Hamill, who explores Smith’s use of photography to structure the visual experience in David Smith in Two Dimensions: Photography and the Matter of Sculpture. Hamill is also writing an essay on Smith’s photography for our catalogue raisonné.) With the limited space allotted for each sculpture in a physical catalogue, it is impossible to convey the multiple personalities of a sculpture in one or two photographs.
Speaking of visual aids, obtaining appropriate photography for the non-Estate-owned works has been particularly time-consuming and challenging. Even now, with the (former) expectation of going to press in July, we have a considerable list of sculptures for which we were unable to secure recent images. Rights and reproduction can be a low priority task for museums and galleries—one museum that shall remain nameless put us off for six years—but in our reduced working circumstances, some institutions may now be able to address image requests. Getting photography from an individual is another matter. Unlike museums, which have websites that post contact information, it can be difficult to open a line of communication with a private owner simply because you don’t know where to start. This type of research, however, can be done from home, including checking for recent auction records on the Christie’s or Sotheby’s websites; searching the title of a work to check for acquisition announcements; or if you have a name, signing up for a people search website like Intelius to find a phone number or mailing address. Putting a more discerning eye on existing photography is also an important process that can be rushed or overlooked. The Estate is currently working with a photo retouching specialist to color-correct our digital images. He can do the work from home, while we can view the results and make comments or suggestions via online file sharing.
I’m certain that everyone working on a catalogue raisonné has a mental list of areas that could have used more research. For me, it was the provenance section. I had some luck in tracking down sculptures with unknown whereabouts by featuring their images in a “missing sculptures” section on our website, and sending images of these works as part of a mass-mailing to collectors. It’s worth noting here, during a time that we may be feeling anxiety about actively working and staying productive, that all I had to do was sit back and wait for someone to get in touch. Sometimes we don’t have to do anything, because all of the work that we’ve already done has built a stable foundation that will allow us to keep moving forward, however slowly. Just a couple of months ago, an art advisor came forward about a Smith work that had been off the grid for almost forty years. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for other new discoveries to come along during the extra time we’ve gained, in this strange time we’re living in.