Books by Christian Huemer
Die Geschichte des Kunsthandels im "Dritten Reich" zu schreiben, steht nicht nur aufgrund einer s... more Die Geschichte des Kunsthandels im "Dritten Reich" zu schreiben, steht nicht nur aufgrund einer schwierigen Quellenlage vor besonderen Herausforderungen. Vom Alltagsgeschäft der Kunsthändler bis zum Widerstand gegen restriktive Vorschriften reicht das Themenspektrum, vom Auktionshandel bis zum Schwarz- und Schattenmarkt, von zahllosen Verbrechen nicht nur an jüdischen Sammlern und Händlern bis zum Kunstraub in den von deutschen Truppen besetzten Ländern. Das Handeln einiger Akteure verstrickt sich zwischen Komplizenschaft und Sabotage in eben so eklatante Widersprüche, wie sie die Kulturpolitik des Nationalsozialismus insgesamt kennzeichnet. Kunst- und Wirtschaftshistoriker untersuchen in diesem Buch den Kunstmarkt und seine Mechanismen im Nationalsozialismus, die Rolle der Raubkunst sowie insbesondere moderner und "entarteter" Werke auf dem Kunstmarkt im "Dritten Reich".
Brill’s Studies in the History of Collecting & Art Markets is a peer-reviewed book series dedicat... more Brill’s Studies in the History of Collecting & Art Markets is a peer-reviewed book series dedicated to original scholarship on the social, cultural, and economic mechanisms underlying the circulation of art. Over the last two decades interest in the formation, display, and dissolution of art collections increased tremendously; art markets, trade routes, and dealer networks became a rich field of interdisciplinary inquiry. Scholarship brought forth a lot of information about the flamboyant personalities to which the possession of art was a lifestyle; for the “social life of things”, i.e. the provenances of individual artworks, many research gaps could be closed. This shift in scholarly interest from the production side to the consumption side of the art world is also reflected in the emergence of specialized post-graduate courses offered by a number of institutions internationally, as well as an ever-increasing stream of exhibitions, conferences, and publications devoted to the subject. Brill’s book series accommodates scholarly monographs, collections of essays, conference proceedings, and works of reference that engage in the broadly defined topic of art markets and collecting practices throughout history.
Articles by Christian Huemer
Das Belvedere: 300 Jahre Ort der Kunst, 2023
The Belvedere: 300 Years a Venue for Art, 2023
Chap. III The establishment of the Modern Gallery in Vienna in 1903 resulted largely from a sense... more Chap. III The establishment of the Modern Gallery in Vienna in 1903 resulted largely from a sense of inadequacy-particularly in the competition with other European cities. 1 The art historian Max Dvořák pointed out at the time that "only once the nationalist idea began to gain in significance for all public institutions" could a sense of unfairness develop about the fact that works "by old and foreign artists" quite naturally had "a permanent home" in magnificent palaces, while "the creations of artists embodying the new national spirit in art were homeless and not, like the old monuments, brought together in public collections for the present and future." 2 Paris had the Louvre and, since 1818, the Musée du Luxembourg for works by living artists. In the German-speaking world there was, above all, the National Gallery in Berlin, the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, and the Kunsthalle in Hamburg. After the Imperial Picture Gallery had found a worthy new home for its Old Masters with the completion in 1891 of its move from the Belvedere to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, attention now turned to finding a "refuge for the poor relations of the court," namely representatives of a modern Austrian school, which were inadequately and unsystematically represented at the imperial court. 3 Initiatives for the founding of a state gallery for contemporary art had existed since the mid-nineteenth century. This was connected with the fact that directly after the revolution in 1848 and the accession to the throne of Emperor Franz Joseph I, promotion of the arts was seen increasingly as part of the state's responsibility toward society. 4 The establishment of an arts section within the recently created Ministry of Education signalled a gradual shift from dynastic to state patronage, in which the question of popular education was to acquire new significance See the standard works on the subject : Hen
Handbuch Werkverzeichnis - Œuvrekatalog - Catalogue raisonné, 2023
Carl Moll: Catalogue Raisonné and Monograph, 2020
Carl Moll’s unusually long period of creativity – which lasted about sixty-five years – begins wi... more Carl Moll’s unusually long period of creativity – which lasted about sixty-five years – begins with the early years of the Wiener Moderne around the fin de siècle, which are shaped by the founding of the Secession, and goes on to include the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy, the First Republic and its demise in the wake of the “Anschluss” with Nazi Germany, and the Second World War. An examination of the evolution of Moll’s painting throughout this lengthy period leads to the surprising conclusion that these historic upheavals were not reflected in his oeuvre, which is notable for its consistently high quality. Key artistic developments such as the birth of Viennese Jugendstil, the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, and the constant alignment with Western Modernism – with Impressionism, Neoimpressionism and Postimpressionism, and, finally, an openness to expressionist trends – had a greater impact upon his artistic work than the widespread political disorder of the day.
Business History, 2020
Proper inventory management is crucial for art galleries. Yet, despite its importance, inventory ... more Proper inventory management is crucial for art galleries. Yet, despite its importance, inventory management has been overlooked in the literature. We distinguish four main strategies used by art dealers to manage their inventory and use this classification to set the inventory strategy of Goupil, Boussod & Valadon, a major art gallery active in France at the end of the 19th century, into perspective. Goupil’s books cover the sale of more than 25,000 artworks between 1860 and 1914. Rapidity to sell was a key element in Goupil’s strategy. Out of the sold artworks, almost 75% were sold within a year. Goupil required a slightly higher mark-up for artists from which he held a large inventory. Mark-up for artists in residence and the likelihood to sell their artworks at a loss were lower, signaling a preoccupation for their long-term market.
Jane C. Milosch, Nick Pearce (eds.), Collecting & Provenance: A Multidisciplinary Approach (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), pp. 3-15. , 2019
arXiv: Physics and Society, 2017
In this article we make a case for a systematic application of complex network science to study a... more In this article we make a case for a systematic application of complex network science to study art market history and more general collection dynamics. We reveal social, temporal, spatial, and conceptual network dimensions, i.e. network node and link types, previously implicit in the Getty Provenance Index (GPI). As a pioneering art history database active since the 1980s, the GPI provides online access to source material relevant for research in the history of collecting and art markets. Based on a subset of the GPI, we characterize an aggregate of more than 267,000 sales transactions connected to roughly 22,000 actors in four countries over 20 years at daily resolution from 1801 to 1820. Striving towards a deeper understanding on multiple levels we disambiguate social dynamics of buying, brokering, and selling, while observing a general broadening of the market, where large collections are split into smaller lots. Temporally, we find annual market cycles that are shifted by count...
In this article we make a case for a systematic application of complex network science to study a... more In this article we make a case for a systematic application of complex network science to study art market history and more general collection dynamics. We reveal social, temporal, spatial, and conceptual network dimensions, i.e. network node and link types, previously implicit in the Getty Provenance Index® (GPI). 1 As a pioneering art history database active since the 1980s, the GPI provides online access to source material relevant for research in the history of collecting and art markets. Based on a subset of the GPI, we characterize an aggregate of more than 267,000 sales transactions connected to roughly 22,000 actors in four countries over 20 years at daily resolution from 1801 to 1820. Striving towards a deeper understanding on multiple levels we disambiguate social dynamics of buying, brokering, and selling, while observing a general broadening of the market, where large collections are split into smaller lots. Temporally, we find annual market cycles that are shifted by country and obviously favor international exchange. Spatially, we differentiate near-monopolies from regions driven by competing sub-centers, while uncovering asymmetries of international market flux. Conceptually, we track dynamics of artist attribution that clearly behave like product categories in a very slow supermarket. Taken together, we introduce a number of meaningful network perspectives dealing with historical art auction data, beyond the analysis of social networks within a single market region. The results presented here have inspired a Linked Open Data conversion of the GPI, which is currently in process and will allow further analysis by a broad set of researchers. 2
Provenienz & Forschung, 2017
Peter Bogner, Richard Kurdiovsky, Johannes Stoll (eds.), Das Wiener Künstlerhaus: Kunst und Institution (Wien: Lehner, 2015), pp. 257-263.
Patrick Michel (ed.), Connoisseurship: L’œil, la raison, l’instrument (Paris: Rencontres de l’école du Louvre, 2014), pp. 103-115.
Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 10, no. 3-4 (Summer/Fall 2014), pp. 33-38.
Lucie Merhautová, Kurt Ifkovits (eds.), Die Wiener Wochenschrift Die Zeit (1894-1904) und die zentraleuropäische Moderne: Studien – Dokumente (Prag: Masaryk Institute, 2013), pp. 181-193.
La Maison Goupil: Il successo italiano a Parigi negli anni dell’Impressionismo (exh.-cat. Palazzo Roverella, Rovigo 2013), pp. 69-75.
Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 11, no. 2 (Summer 2012).
Munkácsy Magic & Mystery (exh.-cat. Wiener Künstlerhaus, 2012), pp. 74-85. Gekürzte Version in: Fine Art Connoisseur (September/October 2012), pp. 58-62.
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Books by Christian Huemer
Articles by Christian Huemer
Christian Huemer (Leiter, Belvedere Research Center) im Gespräch mit:
PD Dr. Roger Fayet
Privatdozent für Kunstgeschichte und Direktor am Schweizerischen Institut für Kunstwissenschaft (SIK-ISEA)
Prof. Dr. Thomas W. Gaehtgens
Professor für Kunstgeschichte, Gründungsdirektor des DFK Paris und ehem. Direktor des Getty Research Institute, LA
Mit einer Einführung von Stella Rollig (Generaldirektorin, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere)
WARNING:
Given the uncertainty caused by the spread of COVID-19, the public event on 12 March has been CANCELLED. The workshop at KU Leuven, on 11-12 March 2020, will take place as it was planned. We'll present its results on the occasion of 'Art Markets: An Integrated Perspective' Summer School, 6-10 July 2020. More details will follow.