An Untold History of the Art Market

0:00Valentina Castellani:Art was never produced in a vacuum, but it was always the result of political, social, religious and economic system. This system determined different market models that are those that I analyze.

0:20I'm Andrew Russeth, and this is The Art Angle, a podcast by Artnet News.

0:33The art market is a famously opaque place, a world of handshake agreements and big dollar private deals. How does it actually operate? And how has it changed over the centuries? In a richly researched new book titled Trading Beauty, Valentina Castellani provides surprising answers, drawing on a long and storied career in the industry. She's worked at Sotheby's and Gagosian, where she helped organize landmark exhibitions devoted to Pablo Picasso and Piero Manzoni. Now she's an adjunct professor at New York University's Steinhardt School, where she teaches a class about the art market. Castellani's book, which was published by Gagosian, reveals how popes, aristocrats, plucky entrepreneurs, and brave true believers developed new ways of commissioning, funding, and selling art, from medieval frescoes to avant-garde conceptual pieces.

1:27It's a wild ride, and it spans some 1 ,500 years. She joined me on The Art Angle to delve into her findings. During our conversation, she uncorked stories about maverick dealers and patrons, the undersung role of women in this narrative, and the ways that artists have cannily enticed the market across time. Perhaps most importantly, she makes the case that the art market's relevance extends far beyond money. Valentina, thank you for coming on The Art Angle.

1:57Valentina Castellani:Thank you so much for inviting me. Staring at your book right now, which is just an astonishing kind of volume that looks at the history of art markets, as the subtitle goes, from the end of the Western Roman Empire up until the present, 1500 years. How did it come about? Why did you want to write a book like this? Well, it happened by chance, if you want. When I quit Gagosian, I was invited to teach a course at NYU on the history of the art market. So I put together a syllabus and I realized that such a book didn't exist. So I started to put together lecture notes and looking at my slides and then the pandemic hit and I started to write it.

2:40Valentina Castellani:At the core of my book is that art was never produce in a vacuum. But it was always the result of political, social, religious and economic system. This system determined different market models that are those that I analyze in my book. I start from the Middle Ages, as you are saying, when the dominant model was the only model was the patronage model, meaning that for a work of art to exist, somebody being the church, an aristocrat, a rich banker, has to ask an artist to produce the work of art. So our romantic, very contemporary idea of the artist going to their studio and waiting for the inspiration and producing a work of art did not exist.

3:31Valentina Castellani:What is interesting is that different market models derive also different criteria, valuations. So, for example, particularly at the beginning of the Middle Ages, when the church was basically the main commissioner of the work of art, because as you know, when the Roman Empire fall in 476, there was a big vacuum that was gradually filled by the church that became the only link amongst population that were very different culturally and for traditions. And so the church became at the beginning, the only commissioner of art and the function of art for the church were mainly building places where the community of the worshipper could gather and also transmit the word of God to a population that was most of the time illiterate.

4:28Valentina Castellani:So this beautiful apparatus of sculptures that we have in the Romanesque and Gothic churches were a way to transmit to people the message and the teaching of God. So it was a didactic and practical function. And at the time, artists were really consider artisans. I mean, their creative personal contribution was not considered at all. The criteria were different. At the beginning, many of them were operating anonymously. And for example, the quality of the material use was considered much more important than the artist creations ideas. For example, the use of gold of this pigment ultramarine that was incredibly expensive because it was by grinding lapis lazuli coming from the mountain of Afghanistan.

5:27Valentina Castellani:So I think it's very interesting to see how different market models shaped how art was perceived at the time, because now when we look at works, I don't know, by Giotto or from Giotto we talk about masterpieces and indeed those are masterpieces that touches us, that talk to us, but at the time they were perceived in a very different way. And I think it's very interesting to analyze how they were produced, how they circulate, how they were valued. Yes. What I love is that it really does read like an alternate history of art almost. You were taking us through the centuries, not through the idea of iconography or symbols, but truly, yeah, how they were seen and how these artworks came to be.

6:16And I'm so glad you start back there in the distant past as this sense of, you know, where we were coming from. And I want to make sure we jump throughout time as we go. Coming more to the present, I think people would be really interested to hear when does the kind of modern art world as we think of it today come into being, meaning dealers representing artists?

6:37Valentina Castellani:Okay, well, I would highlight two different moments. One is the birth of the first free market, meaning a market that was not based on commission. And that happens in Holland during the 17th century, during the so-called Dutch Golden Age, because religious and political circumstances change after the Reformation. So after Luther in 1517 nails his thesis criticizing the selling of indulgences and basically, although he didn't think it would happen, he triggers the Reformation that split Europe after very bloody wars between Catholic and Protestant countries, Poland becomes a Protestant republic.

7:26Valentina Castellani:So that means that the commissioners of art are completely different. The church does not commission art anymore. A court doesn't exist. So artists really have to reinvent themselves to meet the taste and the desires of the mercantile and bourgeois classes that becomes the art buyers. So this affects both the genre, because these new buyers are not interested in religious, mythological grand scenes. They are interested in seeing an artist that celebrates themselves, that celebrates their way of living, so their landscape. So landscape becomes a genre in itself and not just a setting for historical or mythological or religious scenes, still lives, because it's a way to celebrate the richness and wealth and sophistication of their lives.

8:22Valentina Castellani:And of course, interior scene, like the scenes painted by Vermeer, for example. What is even more interesting is that Holland, although it was a small country of just two million people, has a wealth that is very much distributed. That means that also the working classes become art buyers. So first of all, the production of art is enormous. It has been calculated that during the 17th century, five million paintings were produced and that Holland had one artist every 2 ,000 inhabitants, where Italy during the Renaissance, that is another time of artists flourishing, had one every 10 ,000. So there are many artists and many of them were not producing on commission.

9:12Valentina Castellani:They were just producing for a free market. And this is when the specialization of the artists starts. So there were artists only producing winter landscape scenes or still lifes. Those works were sold in what were the embryo of the first art fairs, for example, that were fairs with many different goods and some of them were pieces of art or in tavern or directly from artist studio. So I would highlight this as the birth of a free market. And then, of course, a moment that is really a fundamental shift is when Paul Durand-Ruel at the end. Yes, our hero. Paul Durand-Ruel at the end of the 19th century established the model for the gallery as a promoter of new artists.

10:03Valentina Castellani:And this, I think is a very fascinating story because it is the time when the impressionists were starting to produce their works. And it was the time when the French art world and Paris was indeed the epicenter of the art for the Western world, was dominated by the academy. So it was a centralized system of approval in two different ways. The first one is that the academy dictated a hierarchical order of genre. So what was good paintings, the most sought after important ones were the mythological, religious grand scene, followed by landscape, by portraits, the style that had to be precise, very realistic, And also, and this is the element that is very interesting for our story, is that the Academy organized salons, the most important of which was the Salon of Paris.

11:06Valentina Castellani:And these salons were basically the only venue where artists could exhibit their works. So meaning finding potential buyers, potential commissions. So it was a system very much centralized. In my book, I call it the dictatorship of the Academy of Fine Arts. The first push against this market is the very famous Salon de Refusé in 1863, the Salon of the Refuse, when artists, of course, in order to be accepted in this Salon, had to submit their request to the Academy that would select the works. So the number of the artists that had been rejected was so high that Napoleon III allowed the institution of an alternative salon that was called the Salon of the Refuse.

11:55Valentina Castellani:And this is where Cezanne, Monet, Manet in particular exhibited their works. The reaction was of outrage, mainly, particularly for a painting like, for example, the Dejeuner sur l 'herbe, the luncheon on the grass that was considered ridiculous. Baffling, obscene. Yeah, baffling. Also because it depicted a naked woman. Nudes had been part of the canon for centuries. But the woman that is depicted there with two completely full-dressed men was a recognizable woman, this model Victorine Moran. Her dress are scattered on the ground. That means that she arrived and took her clothes off. The narrative is not clear.

12:43Valentina Castellani:So this is a painting that really triggered outrage. But, you know, it was the first nail in a system that was about to crumble and being changed. And Durand-Ruel really changed. And it was a combination of a new language, that of the Impressionists, that went against all the rules of the academy. Because the impressionists and the movement was really started by four young artists, Monet, Basile, Renoir and Sisley, that found themselves in Paris coming from different parts of the country, from different backgrounds. There were four youngsters, you know, that studied in an alternative academy because they had not been admitted to the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

13:28Valentina Castellani:And they started wandering the countryside and paint what they saw without preliminary sketches, just trying to reproduce on canvas the impression of light and color. So the technique, the style, the subject, and also they depicted the Paris that they saw around us. And this is very interesting for our story, because Paris was going through profound changes. The Baron Osemane was completely redesigning the city. So Paris was really the first modern capital. And the style of the academy felt really stiff and out of date. So the reaction of the public towards this new style was rejections. There are letters, for example, in which Monet laments that he doesn't have the money to buy food.

14:24Valentina Castellani:So until these painters, by chance, Monet and Pissarro met Durand-Ruel, who was in London like them during the French-Prussian War. And Durand-Ruel had the intuition of betting on these artists, of promoting them. And so back in Paris, he started to buy their works in bulk. The numbers you have are staggering. It's staggering. And this is, I have to underscore it for the listeners, the sort of research you've done is incredible. So talking about that moment in Holland where five million paintings are being produced, that these artists are becoming entrepreneurs in their own right. For Durand-Ruel, you're right.

15:06He acquired at least a thousand Monets, 1500 Renoir, 200 Manet. I mean, this is, what, tens of billions of dollars in art now. Tens of billions, yes. I mean, it's astonishing. So, again, tell us more about his innovations and what he did.

15:21Valentina Castellani:Yes, absolutely. His intuition was that a new model was required. In order for these artists to be successful, he had to put in place a strategy. First of all, as we said, buying in bulk. So did he have a sort of monopoly on the work? But nobody wanted the work. So he started to organize monographic exhibitions. And that, again, was something completely new. At the time, only the Musée du Luxembourg, that was the only museum that exhibited contemporary works, had a rule that only two paintings by the same artist could be exhibited. So he organized these exhibitions devoted to Monet, Boudin. And there are, I don't know if I quote them in my book, but a journalist that said in a very despicable way.

16:09Valentina Castellani:So after Monet, now we have an exhibition of Boudin. And if it's not enough, neither. So that was fascinating. It's fascinating to think. A solo show was a new innovation. It was a really innovation. Also, he understood the importance of educating the public. So he started to publish catalogs, books in which he was explaining the new art. He opened his own apartment to the public, I think one day a week, so that they could see a sort of, he had all these paintings, a sort of collection. But his real intuition and what, according to all historians, what really changed the fate of Impressionists, is when he accepted in 1886 an invitation coming from America to exhibit his work in New York.

16:59Valentina Castellani:You have to consider, you know, you have to take a ship, you know. This is a real undertaking. Yeah, exactly. It's a big undertaking. Expenses were paid. This exhibition that was incredibly successful, both with critics and the public and buyers, at the point that he opened an outpost in New York. And the success in New York reverberated back in Europe and France. And I would say from the end of the 80s, 90s, impression is started to sell well.

17:38One of the real exciting through lines in your book is that especially when you reach the modern era, you show that the successful dealers are the ones that had an innovation, that latched on to something. Tell us some more about dealers who had these kind of eureka moments for how they could innovate.

17:55Valentina Castellani:Of course. First of all, once this model was established, it remains the model to promote contemporary and living artists. So there is then a new generation of dealers and artists. So, for example, Volard, who promoted Cezanne and the artists that work with Picasso, for example. A character that I love is that of Berthe Vale. She's been discovered now. There was an exhibition at the Grey Gallery here in New York. A Grey Little Show, yeah. Yes. And then this year, the travel to Paris. But she was this Jewish woman of very modest means who opened a tiny gallery using her dowry. First of all, she sold the first works by Picasso.

18:45Valentina Castellani:When Picasso visited Paris in 1900, he arrived in Paris. He was 19 years old. He didn't know anyone. He didn't speak French. And so he relied on a sort of middleman, this Permagnac, who put him in touch with Bertheveil, who sold some drawings by him, some book files. And she's the one, for example, who exhibited his first Blue Period paintings. And she gave Modigliani his only show that happened while it was alive that was shut down by the police because she exhibited in the window these nudes that we all love now and that they sell for hundreds of millions of dollars that were considered indecent.

19:28Valentina Castellani:She was really courageous and she bet on these new artists. Unfortunately, she lacked the mean then to follow their careers. So as soon as these artists became more successful, but this is actually what happens now, too. Exactly. They went with other galleries. Another very interesting dealer was Daniel Enrican Weiler. He was coming from a family of bankers, German bankers, but he decided to work in the arts. And he devoted himself to the promotion of a specific group of artists, mainly the Cubists. So he's the one who finally gave Picasso representation because it took Picasso a long time. He settled down in Paris in 1904, but he only had representation, I think, in 1912 with Kant Weiler.

20:20Valentina Castellani:In the meantime, he tried with Volart. Volart gave him a show, but that never turned into representation. I think this is how we can see that the market is a system. He was very much supported by Gertrude Stein, who was a visionary collector, who had a salon that was open to writers. You know, if you read the list, it's amazing, like from Hemingway's Fitzgerald. It's unbelievable. Yeah, exactly. And she supported both Picasso, for example, and Matisse. She bought paintings by them and they were hung in her apartment that was open by appointment. And one day a week, it was a sort of open day. And so this is where a lot of critics and artists saw Picasso's works for the first time.

21:13Valentina Castellani:And for example, Michael Frigera thinks that this support is what gave Picasso the courage to embark on a new style that is that of the Demoiselle d 'Avignon in 1907 that that brought to Cubism. What I think is fascinating is that there has always been an interaction. And this is why I say that art was never produced in a vacuum, because there was always an interaction between artists and their environment, even when they were refusing their environment. I'm saying this to say that it's very far from what I think to say that the market is always right. Sometimes the market is wrong. Van Gogh is an example.

21:55Valentina Castellani:But then there is another example that for me is very telling, and it's the fact that The Death of the Virgin by Caravaggio, that for me is one of the most fantastic paintings ever produced by a Western artist that is now in the Louvre, was rejected by its commissioner. It was this Laerzio Cherubini was a papa lawyer. He had commissioned Caravaggio. Caravaggio was a very successful and sought after painter, though he had this troubled life, as you know, he killed a man. He had to flee Rome. He introduced this style that was incredible, influential, although he didn't have a workshop, but, you know, his approach to reality, bring reality into the canvas, reality that is not idealized at all.

22:46Valentina Castellani:And his use of light, dark and the death of the canvas, if you remember, it is like this woman surrounded by the apostle. he probably used a prostitute that had drowned in the river Tiber and she's swollen. This is a shocking painting. That was a shocking painting. In fact, the commissioner didn't want it. And he asked somebody called Carlos Saraceni that is, I guess, unknown to 99.9%. Lost in history to some degree. Lost in history. And the painting that substituted it is like a Madonna ascending to, you know. Different vibe. Yes, completely different vibe. So the market sometimes is wrong. And that's what's really moving about the book, that yes, the market can be wrong, Vermeer, for example, and then true believers come along, especially with the avant-garde, and they support people and they make sure that these things enter the canon, enter the history book.

23:42You've touched on it a little bit, but one of the aspects of the book that I really love as well is that you show the artist throughout history being a real player in the art market, even with Rembrandt and his signature, for example. Can you talk about the artist as a market player?

23:56Valentina Castellani:Absolutely. The artists were never just passive players in the market. Well, Rembrandt is a very interesting example because he was, well, incredibly, of course, talented. He stopped his own workshop at 19 years old. And he started, instead of signing himself as Rembrandt Van Ryn, he started to use just Rembrandt, like a brand that is something like only Italian artists like Raphael of Michelangelo. Angelo had done before. So he was very much aware of his talent and his importance. And he was very sought after. He was helped by a dealer who helped him get commissions. So he was still operating on commissions.

24:40Valentina Castellani:The commissioners were not the church, not the court, but bourgeois people. So, for example, one of his first very successful painting is the anatomy lesson of the Dr. Tulip. And the guilt of surgeon would have an open dissection, I think, once a year. So the subject was not a subject that Rembrandt introduced. But what he introduces is this is where his genius lies, is action. He tells a story. If you compare it to other subjects by other artists, he introduced movement, he introduced a narrative. So one other aspect that I hope and I think comes out of my book is that artists most of the time have operated within restriction, restriction imposed by their patrons, restriction imposed by external circumstances.

25:41Valentina Castellani:like, for example, and I would like to touch upon this later on women, for example, nevertheless, great artists have always been able to produce works that remains, works that touches us, that tell us stories, that make us, I think, reflect and think about our human condition. So I think it's important to know that these artists have indeed operating within restrictions. Yes. I'm glad that you bring up that through line, that thread of women, because that appears throughout the book. And you highlight these very interesting moments, some of which were new to me. For example, is it in Bologna that had a...

26:22Valentina Castellani:Claudinelli? Yes. She's in Florence. That is a fantastic story. So, of course, women had really a difficult time to become artists. First of all, in a patriarchal society, women had difficulties, many fields, not only the art field, but they were denied access to education. So most of the women that were successful were daughters of painters, like, for example, Artemisa Gentileschi, because they could somehow receive training from their fathers. So Plautilla Nelly was a nun. She was completely self-taught and she set up a workshop in the convent where she was. Yeah, exactly where she was. And she taught other sisters to paint.

27:11Valentina Castellani:And so they became very active and economically independent. And this is, I think, an example when an external situation of limitation pushes this individual, this woman, to become very inventive. And Plautilla and Ellie produce the only Last Supper painted by a woman for the refectory of her convent and is six meters across. And what is interesting is that it is on canvas. Whereas, you know, if you think like the Last Supper by Leonardo is a fresco. And that, again, because the fresco technique requires really teaching. And of course, she didn't have the training. Amazing. Amazing. And you do that all the way through to the present.

27:59You offer these case studies. I think some listeners will be familiar with kind of the trajectory of, say, female surrealists or abstract expressionists. But can you highlight some kind of more recent stories? Of course. Yes.

28:12Valentina Castellani:There is a story, although she is not a painter, that I think is really fascinating and is that of Joanna Van Gogh Bungen, who is the one who basically created Van Gogh's market and legacy. Because when Van Gogh died, as we know, he shot himself in 1890 and he died after an agony of two days, I think. A market for his work didn't exist. He had sold one work, the Red Vineyards. But now scholars tend to think that he was valued by his peers and probably that if he had lived longer, he would have eventually had a market. But we don't know. He was also a very highly troubled man. As we know, he was interned in an asylum in St.