Le droit à la beauté, chroniques de L’Express (1960-1992)

We all remember his monumental monograph of Matisse, which he refused to have published in a paperback edition in order to protect the illustrations. But Pierre Schneider (1925-2013) had a double doctorate from the Sorbonne (in art history) and from Harvard (in Romance languages), was an erudite, specialized in Baudelaire and the translator of de Quincey. He was interested in Byzantine art as well as in the graffiti in the New York subway. The new publication of his columns that appeared for over thirty years in the L’Express (1960-1992) show a clear way of writing and a sharp mind. In one of the articles he cries his rage against the waste of les Halles in Paris, in another one he is full of enthusiasm (in three articles of a length we don’t see anymore!) on the renovation of the hospital if Santa Maria della Scala in Sienna. Though it was just the beginning, he had already foreseen the dictatorship of temporary exhibitions at the expense of permanent collections in the major museums, showing explicitly their generalized wish to go from the status of “Kunstmuseum” to that of “Kunsthalle”. And he would conclude with a pessimistic phrase: “Today quality no longer guarantees success; tomorrow, quantity will suffice.”

• Le droit à la beauté, chroniques de L’Express (1960-1992), by Pierre Schneider, Hazan, 2017, 288 p., €25.