Dellheim C. Belonging and Betrayal. How Jews Made the Art World Modern

Brandeis University Press, 2021. — 672 p.Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews Made the Art World Modern by Charles Dellheim is the story of dealers of Old Masters, champions of modern art, and victims of Nazi plunder. Since the late-1990s, the fate of Nazi stolen art has become a cause célèbre. In Belonging and Betrayal, Charles Dellheim turns this story on its head by revealing how certain Jewish outsiders came to acquire so many old and modern masterpieces in the first place – and what this reveals about Jews, art, and modernity. This book tells the epic story of the fortunes and misfortunes of a small number of eminent art dealers and collectors who, against the odds, played a pivotal role in the migration of works of art from Europe to the United States and in the triumph of modern art. Beautifully written and compellingly told, this story takes place on both sides of the Atlantic from the late nineteenth century to the present. It is set against the backdrop of critical transformations, among them the gradual opening of European high culture, the ambiguities of Jewish acculturation, the massive sell-off of aristocratic family art collections, the emergence of different schools of modern art, the cultural impact of World War I, and the Nazi war against the Jews. Dellheim weaves together, eloquently and passionately, the interaction between Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Soutine, Schiele, and so many others with their Jewish dealers, among them the Gimpels, Duveens, Kahnweilers, and Rosenbergs. Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews Made the Art World Modern by Charles Dellheim represents a major contribution to understanding a profound Jewish goal to belong and succeed, only to be betrayed by willful acts by Nazis and their collaborators. This book combines Jewish history and art history and also captures the promise of the twentieth century, and chronicles, in Dellheim’s phrasing, the great ‘betrayal.’ Dellheim is a master storyteller as he interweaves the histories of an extraordinary cast, including the Wildensteins, the Duveens, the Rothschilds, and an array of artists, from Pissarro to Modigliani.Besides, Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews Made the Art World Modern by Charles Dellheim broaches meaningful discussions on art ownership, theft, and restoration. This book is a riveting history of the role of dealers and collectors in the circulation of art before and after the Holocaust through a Jewish lens. This account of their rise, betrayal, and dispossession forms the backstory of postwar provenance research and restitution. Last but not least, this book aims to restore and recreate the life, work, and milieu of certain Jews who became arbiters of taste. Exploring how, against the odds, outsiders on the margins of European high culture suddenly became the Old Masters’ new masters and the modernists’ champions.ContentsPROLOGUE: The Frame
PART I. The Old Masters’ New Masters
1. Horse Dealer to Art Dealer
2. Treasure Island
3. Assimilating Art
4. Acquiring Eyes
5. Metropolitan Man
PART II. Was Modernism Jewish?
6. Madman and Sons
7. Was Modernism Jewish?
8. First Impressionists
9. Berlin Calling
10. Between Bohemian and Bourgeois
11. The Right Banker
PART III. In the Middle
12. The Wheel of War
13. Brothers-in-Arms
14. Custody Battles
15. In the Market of Love
16. Brothers-in-Law
17. Gentlemen and Players
PART IV. To Have and Have Not
18. Artful Jews
19. Artless Jews
20. Next Year in Paris?
21. After the Fall
22. The Dispossessed
23. The Exiles and the Kingdom
EPILOGUE: A Crack in Everything
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index