The Easel

13th September 2022

Tomorrow’s Orthodoxy

Why did the modernist art revolution happen in Paris? By 1905, there were around 3000 aspiring artists there, working with a “dense network of small dealers and galleristes” outside the mainstream salons. Although located in raffish Montmartre, this was a professional community. London had no equivalent, its art world having stayed close to elite society and its patronage.  Of course, outsiders usually become insiders, and Paris’s radical impulse was eventually overtaken – by New York.