Art and the Market: Roger Fry on Commerce in Art

235 Pages·1999·12.566 MB·English

by  Craufurd D. Goodwin

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,