Journal of an homme d'affaires, Rene Gimpel 1918-1939: anatomy of cultural perception

Abstract

Rene Gimpel's Diary of an Art Dealer was published in New York and London in 1966 to mixed reviews. Released twenty-one years after the author died, the publication essentially comprises the journal entries of a Paris-based art dealer during the interwar period of the twentieth century. Despite presenting a subjective view from a single source very little is revealed in the journal about the author himself, thus, in spite of the title, Diary cannot be considered an example of life-writing but rather one of narration. What is remarkable about the journal is that it was kept up for twenty-one years and, among other things, documents aspects of the most formative period of the modern art market: when important European art was sold into North American private collections at an unprecedented rate. Most of that art is now in public museums in the United States and forms a significant part of that nation's cultural heritage. In that respect, Diary is a record of Euro-American exchange revealing patterns of taste and consumption in the early to mid-twentieth century. What is the value of Diary? What is its legacy? How reliable is it, and should that matter? Heavily edited, it was published for general readership and correspondingly appears to have been read widely and uncritically. It has also consistently been mined for data. Diary represents a unique and rich perspective during a time of tremendous flux, but it seems that far from being taken seriously as a memoir or a cultural documentary it has tended to be treated as a footnote to other grander narratives. However the art historian, Sir Herbert Read, who wrote the preface to Diary, described it as: 'no casual journal: it has a purpose, part literary, part historical'. This thesis examines Diary as a narrative and as an historical document. More specifically it is a study of the contexts of its author's life and time observed through the mediating lens of Rene Gimpel's journal.