Catalogues raisonnés

A catalogue raisonné is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all the known artworks by an artist either in a particular medium or all media. The works are described in such a way that they may be reliably identified by third parties.

There are many variations, both broader and narrower than "all the works" or "one artist". The parameters may be restricted to one type of art work by one artist or widened to all the works by a group of artists.

It can take many years to complete a catalogue raisonné, and large teams of researchers are sometimes employed on the task. For example, it was reported in 2013 that the Dedalus Foundation (established by the abstract-expressionist painter Robert Motherwell) took 11 years to complete the three-volume catalogue raisonné of Motherwell’s work which was published by Yale University Press in 2012, with approximately 25 people contributing to the project.

Early examples consisted of two distinct parts, a biography and the catalogue itself. Their modern counterpart is the critical catalogue which may contain personal views of the author.

The term catalogue raisonné is French, meaning "reasoned catalogue" (i.e., containing arguments for the information given, such as attributions.) but is part of the technical terminology of the English-speaking art world. The spelling is never Americanized to "catalog", even in the United States. The French pluralization "catalogues raisonnés" is used.

The New York Times has described catalogues raisonnés as the definitive, scholarly compendia of an artist’s work, the ‘supreme arbiter of the genuine and fake’. In the case of deceased artists the producer of a catalogue raisonné which is regarded as a standard text may have considerable power to determine whether a particular work is regarded as authentic or not. In this context ‘producers’ may include authors, editors, committees or publishers.

Inclusion in or exclusion from a respected catalogue raisonné can have a considerable effect on the market price of a work, amounting in some cases to large sums of money. Inclusion has been called the difference between "great wealth and the gutter," and auction houses sometimes refuse to handle unlisted works. As a result, catalogue raisonné authors have been the targets of lawsuits, and allegedly of bribes and even death threats although no evidence of the latter has reached the courts.

In an edition of the television programme in the BBC documentary series Fake or Fortune? broadcast in the United Kingdom on 19 June 2011, the subject was the authenticity of the Monet painting Bords de la Seine à Argenteuil. The painting was submitted to the Wildenstein Institute which is the publisher of the catalogues raisonnés most widely accepted as authoritative on the subject of Monet paintings. The result of this submission was that the Institute, acting in accordance with the wishes of a descendant of the original author of the catalogues, refused to include it in future editions. This decision was taken despite the fact that the Institute had been presented with considerable evidence of the painting's authenticity.

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Wikipedia