| Abstract |
The PhD dissertation deals with the career of the Greek-born art critic and publisher Tériade (Stratis Eleftheriadis, 1897-1983), who was an important mediator in the Parisian art world from the mid 1920s until the mid 1970s. Focusing on how Tériade’s career may be interpreted in the context of the art world of the twentieth century, the historical approach of the dissertation is enriched by the use of methodological tools from sociology and sociology of art, mainly the concepts of mediation, social networks, and symbolic and financial capital. Through his writings in the interwar Parisian art press and especially through his publications ‘Verve’ from the late 1930s onwards, and taking advantage of a strong professional network that he built, Tériade became established as an important mediator of modern art, who collaborated with and promoted artists such as Henry Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Henri Laurens, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger and Joan Miró, whose art corresponded to his aesthetic ideal. This ideal consisted in a post-cubist aesthetic, and in particular in what Tériade called lyrical plasticity, a combination of pure plastic values with the artist’s emotion. Tériade shaped this perception as a young art critic and later realised it through his choices and strategy as a publisher, when the artists with whom he collaborated were recognised as the classic masters of modernism. The dissertation consists of four parts. The first part discusses and evaluates the methodological interpretive tools of the dissertation. The second part is dedicated to the activities and ideas of Tériade as an art critic, as well as to the building of his professional network. The third part deals with Tériade as a publisher, analysing his publications not only in aesthetic terms but also in relation to the networks through which modern art was created and disseminated, and in connection with the exchange of symbolic and financial capital between the members of these networks. The fourth part discusses the recognition that Tériade enjoyed in the last years of his life and his posthumous fame, as well as his symbolic ‘repatriation’ through his establishment of the Theophilos Museum and the Stratis Eleftheriadis-Tériade Museum-Library in Lesvos. Overall, I use the case of Tériade to highlight the importance of the role of mediators and networks in art production and diffusion and the complex matrix of interactions and interdependencies among actors of the art world on the basis of aesthetic principles and issues of financial success and social recognition.
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Ο Teriade ως τεχνοκρίτης και εκδότης, 1926-1975
