Art Goes America

Manfred Holler and Barbara Klose-Ullmann

Journal of Economic Issues, 2010, vol. 44, issue 1, 89-112

Abstract: This paper interprets the "buying craze" among American tycoons between 1870 and the Second World War concerning mainly Renaissance art, particularly paintings, with the emphasis on the process of this transfer rather than on the art works and the resulting collections. It analyzes the roles of the House of Duveen, the art expert Bernard Berenson and other agents that acted as dominant intermediaries instrumental to the American Renaissance in fine art. Their efforts produced outstanding private collections and eminent art museums. Original American art, however, was crowded out, slowing down its further development for quite some time. The paper shows a slice of Thorstein Veblen's world and of its leisure-class elite engaged in conspicuous consumption and honorific expenditures in search of pecuniary decency.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2753/JEI0021-3624440105 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mes:jeciss:v:44:y:2010:i:1:p:89-112

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MJEI20

DOI: 10.2753/JEI0021-3624440105

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Economic Issues from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().