Art and the Market: Roger Fry on Commerce in Art PDF
Preview Art and the Market: Roger Fry on Commerce in Art
Art and the Market Art and the Market Roger Fry on Commerce in Art Selected Writings, Edited and with an Interpretation Crazifurd D. Goodwin Foreword by Asa Briggs Ann Arbor Copyright © by the University of Michigan I998 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press @) Printed on acid-free paper 200I 2000 I999 4 3 2 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A ClP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fry, Roger Eliot, I866-I934. Art and the market: Roger Fry on commerce in art / selected writings, edited and with an interpretation by Craufurd D. Goodwin p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-472-I0902-2 (cloth: alk. paper) I. Art-Marketing. 2. Fry, Roger Eliot, I866-I934. I. Goodwin, Craufurd D. W. II. Title. N8600 .F78 I999 70I' .oJ-ddc2I Frontispiece: Roger Fry by Duncan Grant, chalk c. I9I5. Estate of Duncan Grant. (Courtesy of Henrietta Garnett.) ISBN13 978-0-472-10902-9 (cloth) ISBN13 978-0-472-02342-4 (electronic) ,,4I_-~" To analyse, to explain, to theorise had for him an irresistible fascination. -Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry: A Biography [His] mind was invincibly experimental and ready for any adventure, however far it might lead him beyond the boundaries of academic tradition .. the impulse to theorize, to expound ideas, was rooted in his mind. - Kenneth Clark, introduction to Last Lectures by Roger Fry Roger Fry was what Bacon calls "a full man" ... a man of science by training and to some extent by temper. -Clive Bell, Old Friends Contents "----,,, .. Foreword by Asa Briggs IX Preface Xl An Interpretation: Roger Fry and the Market for Art I Life· Scientific Method· "The Creation ofA rt" • The Consumption ofA rt· The Art Market· Public Policy· Private Policy· I nftuence· Conclusion Writings of Roger Fry Theory I. Art and Science 69 An Essay in Aesthetics 73 Retrospect 86 Culture and Snobbism 97 A Sale at Christie's I07 Art and Commerce III The Artist and Psycho-analysis I24 A Moral Lecture, or Perhaps an Immoral One I39 2. History The Art of Florence I4S Introduction to Georgian Art ISO The Arts of Painting and Sculpture I6I 3. Policy Art in a Socialism I7I Art and Socialism I8I VlIl Contents Art and the State I94 Art and Industry 205 On the Encouragement of Design in British Manufactures 2IJ Index 2I7 Foreword .. ___ ~h No account of the Bloomsbury Group would be complete without a special study of Roger Fry; Virginia Woolf even wrote a biography of him. Yet Fry left an impact on art appreciation and on aesthetic theory felt far outside the Bloomsbury circle. He became a national authority on art, a description that he would not have particularly liked. Indeed, Kenneth Clark, who wrote an article about him in the Dictionary if National Biography, de scribed him as "the true heir ofJ ohn Ruskin and William Morris." Craufurd D. Goodwin puts such judgments in proper historical per spective, noting what Fry felt about his predecessors as well as his contem poraries. He also clearly brings out the implications of Fry having read natural sciences at Cambridge, where he got a first in both parts of the Tripos. Fry looked for "analogies" between arts and sciences, believed in experiment, and searched after explanatory theory. Therefore, he can be considered at different levels, beginning with journalism, where he excelled for pithy and witty immediate comment, and ending with his lifelong involvement in answering big questions in a very different manner from Ruskin. Fry had little to say about Morris-they had different attitudes to society-although he was like Morris in making as well as writing: paint ing, pottery, the Omega Workshops. There was a golden period from 1910 to 1916, beginning with the Grafton Galleries Post-Impressionist Exhibi tion of 1910 and including the Omega project in Fitzroy Square that began In 1913. By focusing on Fry and the market, Craufurd Goodwin explores territory that may be unfamiliar to many readers of Fry but that Fry himself knew intimately. Economics was an essential element in his interdisciplin ary pattern just as it was, in different versions, for Ruskin and Morris. The essays that Fry wrote on the subject-and the many relevant passages in his books-are here assembled in an accessible form with exactly the right introduction to their content and context. It is necessary for Craufurd Goodwin in interpreting them to go back before 1910, for it was a disagree ment with John Pierpont Morgan, with whom Fry had worked closely,
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