The story of the way London has become an artistic capital cannot be told, the critic John Berger has written once, because “there are too many well -maintained secrets”. This quote marks the beginning of the book of the president of former president James Stourton ROGUES AND SCHOLARS: A History of the London Art World: 1945-2000 (2025), which takes us into an industry conducted via interpersonal relationships, the force of personality and the so-called “Gentlemen 'agreements”.
Stourton's attempt to create a complete story of this period is therefore largely oral and unverifiable. It was built by interviewing the gallery and the staff of the past and present auctions; Concrete evidence is strictly limited to documented sales and auctions, and the spaces opening and firmly on X or Y Street. Among dozens of names listed in thanks, Stourton expresses his gratitude Jonathan Harris In particular for having opened your black (curved) black book of contacts. The following is a litany of eccentric and particularly British caricatures. People incredibly named like Ridley Cromwell Leadbeater ran the counter before Christie, described as a “mixture of Club Hall Porter and Family Butler”, and customers like a certain M. Dent gave gifts such as a caramel apple to the president of Sotheby Peter Wilson. And, yes, the late critic of art Brian Sewell really talked like that.
A history of the world of London art: 1945-2000 (2025), published by Pegasus Books
The book recounts purely anecdotal accounts of the way in which dealers are dealing with each other. In the late 1950s, hearing the rumor Corot Offered during a sale of houses in Somerset, Monty Bernart – which Stourton describes as “an adorable and respected thug” – apparently welded the driver of a train carrying himself and other dealers to bypass a stop so that he can jump from the vehicle and arrive first. Those who seek to really have an idea of the time will find these exhilarating anecdotes, like illicit gossip exchanged on a pint – and ultimately exhausting. Oral history by nature is perfected on several revelations (or several pints, for business, also occurred at the pub or at the restaurant). The resulting tales make enticing stories, but can sometimes stretch credulity. Do we really have to believe, for example, that an anonymous auctioneer Robson Lowe In the 1950s, a “venerated” client stopped speaking during a sale by “striking it very hard in the nose with his hammer-commissioner-commissioner?”
For all the voices mentioned, Stourton is very absent. It is perhaps his prior role as president of Sotheby, or his alleged role of the art historian, who prevents him from commenting, with the exception of strange -and very visible -interjection -, like the call of Brooks, the CEO of Sotheby's New York in the 1990s, a “despots”. Indeed, we can detect a latent bias in this book: he spends most of his story describing the duopoly of Christie's and Sotheby's, and does not even present Bonhams as a auction house up to two thirds of the book, after chapters on the trade in furniture, silverware and Victoriane.
Stourton also betrays a reluctance to deepen irregularities. Sewell, who worked at Christie's, described the double economy: the glamor of the sales rooms upstairs, and the black economy at the bottom of the staff paid so badly that they counted on advice and bribes. Stourton does not linger on this assertion that as long as it is necessary to divert it, writing: “There is no doubt that Sotheby's and other auction houses were similar in this regard.” Many anecdotes are told with the air of an upturn of shoulders and an implicit explanation that “it was another era”, like the concessionaire who called his Benin bronze “Bulgy Eyes”. On his credit, however, Stourton devotes a chapter to the collusion scandal between Sotheby's and Christie's in 1997.
More illuminating, the greatest existential threat to auction houses does not seem to result from importance – even after the 1997 scandal, underlines Stourton: “The recovery was remarkably rapid … with little long -term damage” – but regulations and forced transparency. He says a lot, for example, that Christie's and Sotheby's tried to remove the report from Times editor Geraldine Norman To question the practices of question, the auction houses live: to use false names to place offers; Announce the price for each batch, whether it is sold or not; Or, the most widespread today, removing unsold prizes from the auction house websites.
This story, with its unverifiable accounts, somehow explains the flavor of the operation of auction houses, the result of traditions forged in the back situations and between the words of honor (or not). However, to call it “ROGUES AND SCHOLARS”, reduces an immeasurably complex beast in a “good” and “bad” binary, almost trivializing – for all its colorful characters laughing, there remains a troubled industry.
ROGUES AND SCHOLARS: A History of the London Art World: 1945-2000 (2025), written by James Stourton and published by Pegasus booksis available for online bookstores and bookstores.
