IMPRESSIONISM BEGAN IN REVOLT. Against the restrictive system of artistic training, the group embraced art-school dropouts. Against biased selection committees, they opened their ranks to all. Against hierarchical display conventions, they assigned wall space by lots. And so, in December 1873, they formed a société anonyme, a joint stock company. The artists based its charter on that of a bakers’ union and pledged to finance “the organization of free exhibitions, without a jury or honorific prizes, where each one of the associates can show his works.”4 Having no positive doctrine, their society encompassed an unusually broad range of techniques and temperaments, frustrating attempts––then and now––to define the movement stylistically. Monet preferred landscapes, Morisot figures. Renoir painted thinly, Cézanne thickly. Pissarro worked from life, Degas from memory. Besides these now-famous names, the initial group had twenty-six additional participants, including some re
LACMA CEO and director Michael Govan. Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for LACMA.
Art Industry News is a daily digest of the most consequential developments coming out of the art world and art market. Here’s what you need to know on this Wednesday, February 10.
NEED-TO-READ
LACMA Is Downsizing on Michael Govan’s House (Again) – The director of the Los Angeles museum will have to move for the second time in nine months now that LACMA is looking to sell his house, which it owns, for an asking price of $2.4 million. Govan originally lived in another, $6.6 million home that the museum listed for sale last year. Govan will now have to do without the perk entirely as the museum tries to compensate for revenus drops amid the pandemic. (