�The Most Arrogant Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth-Century Media Culture� (Princeton; $45), by Petra ten-Doesschate Chu
Peter Schjeldahl’s review in the New Yorker: “Gustave Courbet relished scandal as a shortcut to prominence at a time when, for artists, official honors and patronage were losing cachet to notoriety in the popular press and success in the commercial markets….The book advances a present tendency among art historians to reconsider the Old Masters with reference to the art worlds that allocated wealth and prestige in their times. This emphasis is a sign of our own times, when money and celebrity�proliferating fairs and biennials, roaring auctions, around-the-clock Web journals and blogs�exalt the grandstand plays of a Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, or Matthew Barney. Chu�s treatment of Courbet isn�t cynical, exactly; it acknowledges his artistic talent. But, by highlighting every possible instance of manipulation, Chu gives a puppetlike cast to the behavior of the artist and his contemporaries. That�s timely, too; some days in Chelsea galleries it�s hard not to feel like a laboratory animal, grubbing for cheese in a scientifically engineered maze.” Read more.
