The Catalogue Raisonne
Posted by: Rebecca Vnuk
The catalogue raisonné is a wonderful and specialized category of art reference source whose ideals include completeness and authority, but which invariably falls short of at least the former ideal. Publication brings to light a statement of what is known by an expert or team of experts about an artist’s works; at the same time, it is an invitation (reluctant, perhaps) for corrections, updating, and controversy.
John P. O’Neill, Executive Director of The Barnett Newman Foundation, succinctly defines the genre in his foreword to Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné (The Barnett Newman Foundation and Yale University Press, 2004):
“A catalogue raisonné not only visually represents all the works that an artist has created and chosen to preserve but also marshals all the ascertainable facts about their date, medium, size, and ownership. A complete exhibition and publication history are ideally included for each work, providing information about its critical reception. Such a catalogue allows the art historian to place an artist contextually in his time, culture, and artistic milieu.”
Obviously, works by the relevant artist continue to be exhibited and written about, ownership changes, disputes arise about authenticity, and collectors wonder why their Picasso wasn’t included. Some artists have been so prolific that their catalogue raisonné fills many volumes. Often, an artist has worked in different media, and there are separate catalogues for each medium. Artists like Rubens or Rembrandt, who had large workshops or large numbers of imitators, present special avenues for controversy. Octogenarian Cy Twombly, still producing vital art, is due for updates of both painting and sculpture catalogues. The catalogue raisonné of the Spanish-born Mexican surrealist Remedios Varo (1908-1963) is in its recently-published fourth edition; the first edition came long after her death. The genre seems ideal for regularly updated online editions.
Several years ago, on my first trip to Japan, I purchased in a Tokyo antiques flea market what turned out to be an old and faithful copy of an oil painting by Henri Rousseau (1844-1910). How did I know? I went through the Houston Public Library’s Rousseau catalogue raisonné and saw, with a bit of a thrill, the very scene. It was this Rousseau who allegedly told Picasso that “We are the two great painters of our time, you in the Egyptian style, and I in the modern style.”
On our first of several trips to the Art Institute of Chicago before and after this year’s ALA Conference, my wife and I spent an hour savoring the recently-published André Bauchant: A Catalogue Raisonné. Bauchant (1873-1958) was a gardener who painted the beautiful flowers he so lovingly tended, as well as biblical and mythological scenes, in a Rousseau-like primitive style. WorldCat had indicated that the museum’s Ryerson and Burnham Libraries was one of a very small number of libraries to own this magnificently colorful book. So we were anxious to see if our painting signed “Bauchant 1942″ was included. It was, in ancient black-and-white reproduction, and decades short of being fully documented. We see this as an opportunity to provide the editors a color photograph and a history of ownership that at least goes some way toward completing the provenance. After our first trip through the Art Institute’s new Modern Wing that day, we stepped with unexpected delight into the gardens of adjacent Millennium Park–into bouquets Bauchant himself might have painted.
The Houston Public Library has a small but fine collection of catalogues raisonné. On my next visit, I plan to consult the Piet Mondrian catalogue to see if the inimitable Mr. Otis www.intangible.org/Features/otis/09.html depicted Mr. Mondrian scaling the grids of an actual painting or wove it of whole cloth.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Craig, what a wonderful description and advertisement for a type of work often considered boring to anyone except collectors.
You confirm a point I have often argued with myself, i.e., In these times of shrinking budgets can a public library justify buying these scholarly but often expensive books?
An anecdote: Soon after coming to work at the Dallas Public Library I received a long distance call about a catalogue raisonne for an (obscure?) Colorado artist that we had the only copy of. The book had been published in the 1920s. It taught me the lesson. We buy for future users as well present ones.