Van Gogh Museum Journal 2002 bron Van Gogh Museum Journal 2002. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 2002 Zie voor verantwoording: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_van012200201_01/colofon.php © 2012 dbnl / Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh 7 Director's foreword In 2003 the Van Gogh Museum will have been in existence for 30 years. Our museum is thus still a relative newcomer on the international scene. Nonetheless, in this fairly short period, the Van Gogh Museum has established itself as one of the liveliest institutions of its kind, with a growing reputation for its collections, exhibitions and research programmes. The past year has been marked by particular success: the Van Gogh and Gauguin exhibition attracted record numbers of visitors to its Amsterdam venue. And in this Journal we publish our latest acquisitions, including Manet's The jetty at Boulogne-sur-mer, the first important work by this artist to enter any Dutch public collection. By a happy coincidence, our 30th anniversary coincides with the 150th of the birth of Vincent van Gogh. As we approach this milestone it seemed to us a good moment to reflect on the current state of Van Gogh studies. For this issue of the Journal we asked a number of experts to look back on the most significant developments in Van Gogh research since the last major anniversary in 1990, the centenary of the artist's death. Our authors were asked to filter a mass of published material in differing areas, from exhibition publications to writings about fakes and forgeries. To complement this, we also invited a number of specialists to write a short piece on one picture from our collection, an exercise that is intended to evoke the variety and resourcefulness of current writing on Van Gogh. The picture we offer in this publication, however, is far from complete. For example, we have not provided a detailed account of technical research into Van Gogh's paintings, a line of enquiry that has become increasingly important in recent years, providing insights into the way the artist worked and helping to clarify issues of authenticity. Nevertheless, our survey suggests that interest in Van Gogh remains not only undiminished but has even intensified since 1990. It is also possible to identify a number of trends. It would appear, for example, that scholars are paying more attention to the original source material, striving for greater accuracy as the details of the artist's life and his oeuvre are pieced together. At the same time, there is an increasing focus on the context in which Van Gogh worked and on studying the development of his art in relation to his contemporaries. The Van Gogh and Gauguin exhibition is just one prominent example of this. As with so many fields of research, the more new information that comes to light on Van Gogh, the more one becomes aware of the gaps in our knowledge. It is clear that there is work enough to keep us busy far beyond the next 30-year period. The Van Gogh Museum intends to continue to play a key role in research on Van Gogh, through its own projects and offering opportunities, such as this publication, to stimulate the work of outside specialists. This edition of the Journal, then, is not just a tribute to an artist whose work remains alive and provocative a century and a half after his birth, but also to all those scholars who have dedicated their time and energy over the years to evolving a closer understanding of his art. This year, the format of the Journal has been altered slightly, in that there is no introduction reporting on the previous year's activities at the Van Gogh Museum. From 2004 this summary will appear in a separate publication, our new annual report. Please contact the editors should you wish to receive a copy. Van Gogh Museum Journal 2002 John Leighton Director Van Gogh Museum Journal 2002 8 [Van Gogh 150] fig. 1 Portrait of Camille Pissarro, from sale Collection Coray Stoop, Lucerne (Theodor Fischer) and Amsterdam (A. Mak), 29 July 1925, lot 107 Van Gogh Museum Journal 2002 9 When myth seems stronger than scholarship: Van Gogh and the problem of authenticity Stefan Koldehoff+ Whenever in the past months and years the name of Vincent van Gogh has been mentioned in the international press, the reason was not necessarily a large exhibition or a spectacular record sale at an auction. The biggest headlines have always been reserved for allegedly new revelations in the debate on the authenticity of the artist's works. Frequently, the theories proffered from various sides in this debate have indeed been closely bound up with precisely those events which in themselves have a strong public appeal, namely exhibitions and auctions. This article examines the authenticity debate both as an art-historical necessity and as a media-psychological phenomenon. It also seeks to determine the extent to which the Van Gogh myth, which was deliberately generated soon after his death, must be made responsible for the fakes that have cropped up again and again over the course of the past century. For the last 15 or so years, in widening the scope of their research to include the sociological and commercial aspects of art, a number of art historians have examined the interaction between art, the art market, collectors and the public. In 1987, Nicholas Green identified those factors responsible for the changing strategies of the art market in the second half of the 19th century in France: ‘[...] the rapid rise in particular forms of modern art [...]; the role of journalism and historical expertise in securing the cultural and investment value of art works; and, crucially, the strange alliances between speculative collectors, critics and dealers. In fact, though unnamed, the operations of the latter were ever-present throughout all this enthusiastic hype and precious connoisseurship.’1 The following year, Robert Jensen likewise saw the shift of the art scene from the Salons and public exhibitions to private galleries at the beginning of the 20th century as the cause of fundamental changes to art marketing during its early development: ‘In our century, alliance with a private gallery became considerably more important for an artist's career than membership in a Secession or graduating from one of the state art academies.’2 The strategies used by art dealers to promote the artists they represented as unique contemporary figures - and in such a way that they became firmly lodged in the awareness of potential collectors - were formulated by Jensen, again very pointedly, six years later: ‘To market modernism artists, their dealers, critics, and historians required above all to establish its historical legitimacy. The historiographic enterprise was as much a part of merchandising Impressionism as the increasingly refined practices of art dealers to promote not only individual paintings but whole careers, and to do so not only through conventional publicity, but through carefully constructed exhibitions and a mode of personal persuasions + Parts of this article will be published in more comprehensive form in a book to appear in March 2003 (Dumont, Cologne). 1 Nicholas Green, ‘Dealing in temperaments: economic transformation of the artistic field in France during the second half of the 19th century,’ Art History 10 (March 1987), p. 60. 2 Robert Jensen, ‘The avant-garde and the trade in art,’ Art Journal (Winter 1988), p. 361. Van Gogh Museum Journal 2002 that variously appealed to the speculative and/or connoisseurship skills of the potential client, the amateur.’3 The challenge, therefore, was to make one's own artist stand out against the mass of other artists in the market, either by (prematurely) establishing him as a historical figure, or by promoting him as someone absolutely singular to his time. To this end, the biographical and sociologi- 3 Idem, Marketing modernism in fin-de-siècle Europe, Princeton 1994, p. 3. Van Gogh Museum Journal 2002 10 cal aspects of the artist's life were made increasingly important, to such an extent that in some cases the artist's biography was considered just as significant as his work - provided, of course, it was able to set him apart from the rest. This certainly applied to Van Gogh in the years following his death, perhaps more so than to any other artist of classic modernism. His biography rapidly became a sales-promoting myth, touting him as the lone wolf whose art nobody understood and who, for this reason, (allegedly) sold only one painting during his lifetime. Whilst reliable research has meanwhile succeeded in disproving most such legends, the art world and the art market have refused to be robbed of their illusions without putting up a fight. What they have sought to preserve is the aura of the most expensive painter of all times, one whose name still guarantees high circulation figures in media. The outcome of the discussion is, in the final analysis, reminiscent of the quintessential message of Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's pendulum: one has only to believe strongly enough in one's theory and one will always find the matching proof - not to mention the means of making it public. Anyone who has paid close attention to the relevant specialist literature knows that time and again careful corrections have been made to Vincent van Gogh's oeuvre. The acceptance or rejection of works have in the past been based on painstaking examinations of style and analyses of material, on a reconstruction of the respective picture's provenance, and on comparison with works of unquestionable authenticity. During the past ten years, however, the discussion on the authenticity of certain Van Gogh works has clearly been gathering momentum, not least through the active participation of the press, radio and television.