University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press
Pages: 306
•
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-1-61149-616-1 • Hardback • May 2016 • $123.00 • (£95.00)
978-1-61149-617-8 • eBook • May 2016 • $116.50 • (£90.00)
K. Porter Aichele is professor emerita at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Collectors as Connoisseurs and Curators
1 Duncan Phillips, Augustus Vincent Tack, and a Collection in the Making
2 Albert C. Barnes, Chaim Soutine, and the Art in Seeing
3 Albert Eugene Gallatin, Juan Gris, and the Patron as Painter
4 Lillie Bliss, Paul Cézanne, and the Making of an Advocate
5 Etta Cone’s Collaboration with Henri Matisse
6 G. David Thompson, Paul Klee, and Display as Philanthropy
Conclusion: Legacies of Learning and Display
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
K. Porter Aichele’s remarkable study, Modern Art on Display: The Legacies of Six Collectors, pairs each of her chosen collectors with an artist with whom he or she was particularly close, and through these examples, offers a careful analysis of unusually astute art collecting in the early 20th century. As she says herself, “this study develops the thesis that the savviest collectors of early twentieth-century art had more than financial means, keen instincts, and unflappable gumption; they had the desire and ambition to learn about the art they collected.”In a sense they became knowledgeable curators of their own collections. It is a captivating analysis, incorporating observation, research, and theory to show how these collectors formed a kind of collaboration with the artists through their choice of works to buy, and their efforts to understand modern art before it became popular. She delves into an analysis of the collectors’ ways of thinking about art based on what they read, what they lectured or wrote about, and how they displayed their collections. Dr. Aichele makes excellent use of both archival and published material, and has combined this research with her own sensitive observations, producing a highly readable and important study that will enlighten both scholarly audiences and the general reader interested in modern art.
— Nancy Hirschland Ramage, Charles A. Dana Professor of the Humanities and Arts Emerita, Ithaca College