“You ought to write. You need to probe the heart of life”: art dealer and diarist René Gimpel and the interwar transatlantic art trade (1918-1939) . Review of: The Journal of a Transatlantic Art Dealer. René Gimpel, 1918-1939, by Diana J. Kostyrko, London, Turnhout: Harvey Miller/ Brepols Publishers, 2017

Abstract

A prominent art dealer operating between Paris and New York during the interwar years, René Gimpel (1881-1945) kept a diary which was first published in 1963 and then republished in an extended version in 2011. Using the diary as a tool, albeit acknowledging its sometimes problematic nature as literary object, Diana J. Kostyrko seeks to frame Gimpel’s life and business activity in a vast transdisciplinary account. This valuable book, the second in Harvey Miller s series on Collectors and Dealers, fills some important historiographic gaps in the history of collecting, the history of the art market and more broadly sheds light on the rise of modernity.

Keywords

• rené gimpel
• transatlantic art trade
• collecting
• journal
• modernity
• taste
• art market
• dealership