Book publication

The Professional Committee of Art Galleries is committed to promoting the central role of galleries in the artistic and cultural sector by drawing on their specificities, their expertise, and their work in promoting artists or artistic trends. The Professional Committee of Art Galleries publishes works that highlight the essential role of gallery owners in the careers of artists. These works highlight the essential role of gallery owners in defending, promoting and disseminating artists, who are thus indisputable contributors to their entry into the art history.

Histoire des galeries d’art en France du XIXe au XXIe siècle

This project, conceived and organised by Georges-Philippe Vallois during his almost five-year term of office (2011-2019), has benefited from the enthusiastic support of Marion Papillon, and has been accompanied by successive teams.
Art galleries, little-known intermediaries between creators and their public, are at the heart of this book. Five specialists – historians, art historians and economists – draw on the most recent research to offer an unprecedented overview of the history of art galleries in France, from the nineteenth century to the present day.
This book provides an original history of an art market that has reacted to societal changes and artistic revolutions: it sheds light on the complex relationships that exist between dealers, artists, institutions and collectors of modern and contemporary art, as well as the profound changes in the profession of art dealer, from the curiosity sellers of yesteryear to the gallery owners of today.

La Collection Galerie d’art
Published on the initiative of the Professional Committee of Art Galleries published by Hermann, La Collection Galerie d’art pays tribute to the great French gallery owners of the second half of the 20th century. The different biographies in this new collection are those of major players in art history who have defended emerging artistic practices, often pioneering and breaking with the conventions of the time, against all economic logic.

Jean Fournier, a gallery owner in love with color is the first work in the Collection Galerie d’art. Its author, Catherine Francblin conducted the survey among the gallery owner’s entourage: curators, art critics and artists as well as the Galerie Jean Fournier, based on archives that have remained unpublished to this day.

Far from being a simple monograph devoted to Jean Fournier, this book, illustrated with unpublished archival documents, reveals Jean Fournier’s insight in espousing the cause of certain artists whom he had foreseen very early on would be among the major figures of art history.

The second book in the collection, Iris Clert, l’astre ambigu de l’avant-garde, written by historian and art critic Clément Dirié, was published in the fall of 2021. The career of Iris Clert, figures essential on the Parisian and international scene of the 1960s, demonstrates that there are other ways of apprehending the profession: innovation, spirit of discovery and ability to create the event are the cardinal values of this talent scout.

Quand l’art contemporain passe à la télévision
Co-published in 2020 by the CPGA and the INA, this book is based on Clémence de Montgolfier’s doctoral thesis, which won the INAthèque Research Prize in 2018.
Why are programs on contemporary art so rare on television? How are media representations of works of art and artists, often stereotyped on the small screen, symptomatic of the different visions of culture that exist in our societies? Originating in the year of the creation of the first Ministry of Cultural Affairs in 1959, at the time of the RTF, this work is based on the analysis of archives of broadcasts devoted to contemporary art in the field of plastic arts in France and their development up to the present day. He thus seeks to show how television has been able to define and show “the worlds of art” over the ages. This great popular media proves to be a fertile source for thinking about images and discourses on contemporary art in a transdisciplinary way, and allows us to question what connects arts and media, cultures and representations, both yesterday and today. It is then a question of better understanding the permanent negotiations between logics of creation and industrial logics which are at work in culture.