From Antiquity to Modernity, How Art Fairs Became A Cultural Mainstay

With almost 300 occurrences around the world in 2019, the art fair is undoubtedly one of the most crucial infrastructures of the global art market – an essential platform for business, trade, networking, and a considerable industry on its own. But how did art fairs initially come to be? What have been their most essential features throughout history, and how much of their original inner structure has the contemporary art fair retained, despite its many transformations? Here we reconstruct the evolution of the art fair, observe how societal change and historical progress have fostered new formats and features, enabling the omnipresence of the art fair as we know it today.

The Origins of Art Fairs

Religious Festivals and Pilgrimages

Religious festivals in Antiquity are considered to be the precursors of art fairs, as they initiated the structural qualities that would become quintessential for all future events of such magnitude. These annual gatherings and pilgrimages, intertwining religion with commerce, were dominant in all great ancient empires, from the Roman and Greek Empires to the Han-Dynasty. They endeavoured to showcase the outstanding and inimitable merits of the elite, by means of demonstrations, spectacles and displays of rare items, that would bring together the upper echelons of the Imperial populations.. Remarkable efforts were invested in the organisation of the festivals, to highlight their exceptional character and to attract as many people as possible.

Such festivities would put on hold the daily activities and gather masses in one single location, thus requiring sophisticated, especially apropos transportation, food and shelter. The promotion of these events in Antiquity also introduced the earliest forms of networking, as the organisers and merchants would exert themselves to spread the news throughout an entire empire. Metamorphosed into worlds unto themselves with a distinctive framework and inherent rules, these events encouraged participants to strengthen existing ties and establish new ones.

As people from distant lands would gather for the sole purpose of these festive events, they would bring along the rarest and most valuable objects, which would be proudly exhibited to spark interest, curiosity and appeal among the visitors. These artifacts were displayed in temporary edifices – houses, temples or tents – especially erected for the occasion. This tradition slowly became an essential aspect of the festivals, and eventually led to an increase in trade and the creation of markets, which resulted in the familiar association of fairs and commerce.

Artisanal Fairs

Artisanal fairs hence emerged as an unintended outcome of these religious festivals and gatherings, and were especially popular in the Roman Empire, up to the late 5^th century. From there on, societal changes affected organised commerce which significantly weakened and nearly vanished, until the late 7^th century when it resurfaced with the Saint-Denis fair established near Paris, which paved the way for the further developments of artisanal fairs. This model swiftly blossomed throughout Europe, and particularly thrived around the 12^th and 14^th centuries, most notably with the Champagne fairs of northeastern France, and the Stourbridge fairs in Cambridge, England.

The 12^th century Great Fairs of Champagne were a milestone in the history of such events, mainly because of the creation of the “conduct of fairs”, and the “ward of fairs”, namely a protective system for the merchants, and an elite of guards ensuring security and the upright fulfilment of all contracts. Due to their locations, these fairs were also frequented by merchants from all across the globe, which induced the need to consolidate an international system of financial credit. This facet became essential, as it consolidated trade relationships outside of the events, and introduced the sales-partner model as well as the patron-client relationship, two key features of premodern economics.

Artisanal fairs also flourished throughout the 15^th and 16^th Centuries and progressively drifted away from religion and sacred associations. They evolved into actual platforms for trade where the emphasis was put on the rarity of items displayed and the formation of enduring marketing relationships, usually to take place at a recurring point in the calendar. While they essentially retained the initial architectural configuration of religious festivals, they reshaped their inner structures, abandoning the idea of an event fostering a political and spiritual message, and instead focussing on mercantile activities. The aesthetic appeal also became a focal point, with merchants relentlessly working on making their stalls as attractive as possible. The modes of display began to take precedence, with eye catching presentations increasingly the norm.

The Earliest Instances of Art Marketing

In the 16^th Century, the city of Antwerp became an international hub for trade and fairs, with an exceptional number of foreign merchants settling in the city and exporting globally from this base. Artists and other artisanal professionals thus discovered a thriving audience and rich expanding markets where they could prosperously sell their work. On the basis of biannual fairs, Antwerp’s expanding economy secured the city’s reputation as the reigning commercial and financial capital of Europe. The first ever fair to be specifically designed for the display and sale of art opened in 1460, in the courtyard of the Church of Our Lady, which would later become the Cathedral of Antwerp. Known as Our Lady’s Pand, the fair exhibited and sold paintings, sculptures and illustrations, as well as some manuscripts. The event encountered tremendous success, and thus became a new model for the marketing of art.

Prior to the 16^th Century, the buyer-seller relationship was a rather direct one, the merchants owned the goods and the buyers would buy for themselves. But the new commercial infrastructure and magnitude of the Antwerp art fairs brought about a new kind of infrastructure, the art dealer. With their large network, educated background, endless capital and a commercial mindset, the dealers would not only link seller and buyers, but also facilitate sales thanks to funding. The role of the art dealer became indispensable, and has been in constant expansion ever since.

With the technical advances of the 17^th and 18^th Centuries, interest grew towards industrial production and machinery, which led to the rise of sample fairs, slowly replacing artisanal fairs. These sample fairs were not purposely designed to sell merchandise, but rather meant to advertise new items and promote their production, fostering the trade fair premise of engendering future orders and not just on-the-spot transactions. . Although these exhibitions were of a more industrialized nature, they also displayed artworks from around the globe. As the French Salon model and other similar forms of art exhibitions in other countries were gaining in cultural significance, the presence of art in the sample fairs began to dwindle as it became increasingly concentrated in more specialised forum.

The Rise of the Exhibition Model

Le Salon Parisien

In Paris, between 1667 and 1789, the monarchical regime was funding exhibitions exclusively displaying art by the members of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. These shows were initially semi-public, only opened to a certain elite, but the restrictions loosened around 1725, at which point they took the name of Salons – after the Salon Carré du Louvre, where they were held. When the Académie Royale was supplanted by the École des Beaux-Arts in 1795, the salons began to welcome all artists, regardless of their affiliation to a certain école.

Over the years, the selection process remained nonetheless controversial and tainted with a political agenda; the 1863 edition was exclusively reflective of the the Emperor’s traditional taste in art, and his appreciation for historical depictions – he purchased for his personal collection Alexandre Cabanel’s The Birth of Venus immediately after seeing it. This led more progressive artists to contest the system, the ones whose works had been repeatedly rejected by the jury decided to challenge the institution, and were granted by Napoleon III the opportunity to exhibit their works in another salon, resulting in the creation of the first Salon des Refusés, which displayed works from Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, and Édouard Manet, among many others.

The Royal Academy of Arts & The British Institution

Across the English Channel, the exhibition format was also favoured and in demand. In 1768 London, architect Sir William Chambers presented King George III with a plea signed by approximately 36 artists, demanding the institution of a society to promote the arts of design, as well as suggesting the creation of a School of Design, and the institution of an annual exhibition. Enthralled by the idea of a large scale exhibition, the King gave his approval, hence leading to the creation of the Royal Academy of Arts. Since 1769, the Summer Exhibition of the RA has been held every year without fail, making it the largest continuously staged open submission art show.

In contrast to the Royal Academy of Arts’ Summer Exhibition and its open submission structure, the British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom was formed as a slightly more conservative private gallery and fostered regular exhibitions of Old Masters paintings, while also operating as a school for artists, who had the opportunity to reproduce classical paintings lent by its members. Concerned with stature and rather conservative in taste, it was mainly admitting distinguished visitors and noble subscribers, which ended up damaging its relationship with younger British artists, who were looking for change. While it thrived for almost sixty years, it was disbanded in 1867, at which point the Royal Academy of Arts took over the loan exhibitions of Old Masters paintings.

Great Exhibitions