Haunting Modernity

 From Art in America:

Belonging and Betrayal and House of Fragile Things describe a moment of tremendous upheaval and expansion in Europe’s metropolises, especially Paris, where the Jewish population grew swiftly, arriving from Eastern Europe and historically Jewish regions of France like Alsace. With its promise of economic opportunity, social mobility, and a particular brand of French universalism, Paris was an ideal home for those seeking freedom, tolerance, and greater prosperity.

The upending of social and economic hierarchies in nineteenth-century Paris opened new horizons for both the artistic avant-garde and newly arrived Jews. Belonging and Betrayal explores the intersection of these two worlds, telling the story of enterprising middle-class Jews—grain traders and horse dealers by profession—who became so enamored of the art they saw on trips to the Louvre that they eventually switched careers, tying their trade to their passions, and trying their luck in the burgeoning art market. Almost none of these first dealers, such as Nathan Wildenstein and Ernest Gimpel, were formally trained in art or art history. Instead, they relied on skills developed in their previous occupations: a good eye for quality, solid business acumen, and the ability to negotiate with buyers and sellers. Jewish dealers were drawn to modernism for practical and aesthetic reasons. They found success within the emerging market for modern art, which, because it was new, had a less established structure and therefore less discriminatory hurdles for them to clear. At the same time, Dellheim suggests, their love for art allowed the first Jewish dealers in Paris to take great risks in an uncertain new market above and beyond economic considerations. He shows how these dealers proved their commitment to modern art and artists in the face of potential financial instability and public derision.

 McAuley’s House of Fragile Things, on the other hand, looks at the Parisian art world of this period from the perspective of its most exclusive Jewish circles. It focuses on how those patrons, most of whom made their fortune in the world of international finance, later dedicated their lives to cultivating a sense of national belonging, only to be betrayed by fellow citizens who would deny first their Jewish countrymen’s Frenchness, then their humanity. Rather than follow the emerging avant-garde, these collectors tended toward French art of the ancien régime as a matter of both taste and national pride. Their aesthetic preferences were remarkably shared by some of the most anti-Semitic thinkers of fin de siècle France, Édouard Drumont and Jules de Goncourt, who argued that the era directly preceding the French Revolution most embodied the French national spirit. Their biting attacks against Jewish collectors illuminate how even the most privileged israélites, French-born Jews, were not immune to slander and scorn: Drumont, author of the anti-Semitic screed La France juive, wrote of the opulent Château de Ferrières, built by James de Rothschild in north central France, “it’s a mess, a train wreck, an incredible junk store,” but that in the manse’s Louis XVI salon “in the middle, like a trophy, there is the incomparable harpsichord of Marie-Antoinette, which is heartbreaking to find in this house of Jews.” Collectors like the Rothschilds were excoriated for having bad taste, on the one hand, and on the other for “stealing” French patrimony. Despite the slander, these collectors considered themselves both patriots and custodians of French culture, and many of their collections were bequeathed to the state. Moïse de Camondo, for example, donated his house and collection to the state upon his death; the museum is named after his son, Nissim, who was killed fighting for the French during World War I. (Read more.)

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