Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

Can Bernard Buffet Ever Make a Comeback?

January 4, 2016 by Marion Maneker

51SidCNrqsL

In the middle of January, Nicholas Foulkes’s book about Bernard Buffet will be available in the UK. With halting progress, forces are aligning to reclaim Buffet’s reputation. Once an artist with a massive reputation in postwar France and a darling of the jetset in the 1950s, opinions differ on why the painter’s reputation crashed in the years afterwards.

In his Vanity Fair essay from two years ago, Foulkes offers a variety of explanations from Pierre Bergé’s abandonment of the artist for Yves St. Laurent to Andre Malraux’s close relationship with Picasso who viewed the young painter as a potential usurper to Buffet’s choice of wife who made him unhappy, and, far worse, boring. Or it could simply have been that Buffet degenerated from a compelling artist to a painter of kitsch.

Foulkes doesn’t offer in the magazine article, but he might in the book, the additional fact that the avant garde in art moved from Paris to New York after the end of the second world war.

Whatever the cause of his fallen stature, Foulkes points out that collectors like Adam Lindemann have made a run at putting Buffet into a new context. With the rise of figurative painting, that may yet come to pass.

Here’s a brief anecdote from Foulkes’ Vanity Fair piece:

“It is possible that I might like Buffet and that his a charming man,” snarled the inventor of Cubism, “but that doesn’t stop his painting from amounting to nothing.” Imagine then the grand old artist’s horror when, upon seeing Buffet in a fashionable restaurant on the Croisette in Cannes, Picasso’s children Paloma and Claude lef the table to ask Buffet for his autograph. At the beginning of 1958 it must have seemed inevitable that 29-year-old Buffet would become to the second half of the 20th century what Picasso had been to the first.

Bernard Buffet: The Invention of the Modern Mega-artist (Amazon UK)

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Bernard Buffet (Vanity Fair)

More from Art Market Monitor

  • The News from Big Pink: Asia Remains Force Behind Colored Diamond MarketThe News from Big Pink: Asia Remains Force Behind Colored Diamond Market
  • I Love the Art MarketI Love the Art Market
  • Met Closes Stores and Considers Further CutsMet Closes Stores and Considers Further Cuts
  • Oliver Stone: Not an Art CollectorOliver Stone: Not an Art Collector
  • Phillips NY Under the Influence = $4.76mPhillips NY Under the Influence = $4.76m
  • Artprice’s Top 20 Artists of 2018 (So Far)Artprice’s Top 20 Artists of 2018 (So Far)

Filed Under: General

About Marion Maneker

LiveArt

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor
 

Loading Comments...