The WHO’S WHO IN INTERNATIONAL ART guide is twenty years old.

If a whole generation drunk the words of a teenage poet, Arthur Rimbaud, to “change life”, we feel like saying that the (modest) team from which WHO’S WHO IN INTERNATIONAL ART originates has also seen itself caught in the breeze of changes.

Rebelling against the daunting silence surrounding most artists, the victims of a reduced and restrictive art market, it made a ludicrous bet: helping to “change the outlook on the world of artists” by refusing to limit it to the top names favoured by the dominating media, institutions and merchants. A ludicrous bet, indeed, because at the time it was not an obvious thought, including – and above all – among the artists themselves...

Some ideas can linger for a long time, even when they are dying out. Turning art galleries and the public authorities into the only negotiators allowed to “decide” on the fate of artists was just one of them.

That was undoubtedly our biggest surprise, since it was so obvious to us that artists needed to break away from this idea, which proved day after day to be the cause of the miserable welcome generally reserved to most of them. Yet, the first to resist this idea were the first people involved: the artists themselves. Why?

We eventually realised, through our many conversations with them, that the world of artists was still governed by the world of art galleries, each awaiting “his or her” merchant, like Picasso “bumping into” Kahnweiler. As if the nineteen eighties, transformed by the newly born technologies — faxes, computers and, later, the Internet — and an art world subjected, like the rest of the economy, to an increasing — some would even say wild — competitiveness, as far as the market or the institutions are concerned, in short, as if such a context did not call for a new understanding of the contemporary art market.

In fact, no such thing was happening. The history of modern art and its market continued to fuel the relationship between artists and their profession or the art world, forgetting at the same time the thousands of artists swept aside as a result of the intervention of galleries since the days of the Impressionists, then galleries and institutions from the 1960s (let us recall that in 1850 there were already 4450 artists — all professionals — and that there are now more than a million in Europe and the United States).

Most artists — except for a few forerunners — insisted on ignoring the lack of public attendance in comparison with the rich and abundant artistic production on show, and the fact that waiting for “the” merchant was not likely to improve the situation.

There was clearly a contradiction between the system of distribution, inherited from the end of the 19^th century, and the access to the contemporary public, despite a greater number of galleries, and not only in big towns.

As a matter of fact, this contradiction had not escaped those galleries labelling themselves as contemporary art galleries, since they launched some fairs precisely to meet with a wider public and thus seduce a new kind of customers.

Our work for many years consisted therefore in gathering artists around the simple but essential idea that, without feeling ashamed of it, we all have to “react and take hold of our fate”, to quote a much later phrase by French video producer Sylvie Blocher (during the first National Meetings between Plastic Artists in Paris, from 17^th to 20^th September 2003).

Promising miracles was therefore out of the question, simply because the artists were going to roll their sleeves up in a joint effort, investing what they could (their nearest and dearest, their friends or their sponsors too). But promising greyer days in the future, if artists did not involve themselves more in the distribution of their works, that was certainly quite realistic.

In other words, artists had to become more visible because, in the contemporary world, being seen would increasingly mean “existing”. Something obvious nowadays.

These new “entrepreneurial artists”, as we soon called them among the editorial team, quickly saw their number enlarge. Among us of course, but also elsewhere. Apart from new publications, there appeared more and more fairs, exhibitions, places for associations, “open door” workshops created by some artists or existing thanks to them. Under the impulse, a wider public — in the occidental world — was able to discover the art of its time.

Forgive us if we blow our own trumpet, because, not only had we announced this evolution but we contributed to it, at a time when “elsewhere”, precisely, little interest was being shown.

Whilst we never got tired of telling the artists of the need to manage their own career, in other words the distribution of their works (which, for the editorial team, means thousands of contacts entered into repeatedly since our publication was born), we also multiplied the informative means to allow them to do it within an exacting and professional editorial context.

We thus created, after the WHO’S WHO IN INTERNATIONAL ART yearbook, some collections of art cards, stamps, engravings, monographs, which have become inescapable (and copied...) landmarks.

We accompanied these different series of thematic exhibitions, either in the context of a programme (In Praise of Small Format Work in Contemporary Art or The International Days of Painting in Paris), or within fairs such as the international Book and Press Fair in Geneva or the Interior Decorating Fair in Nice.

As soon as the Internet was available, we decided to publish on line every year the new edition of the WHO’S WHO IN INTERNATIONAL ART guide, in order to enable the largest possible number of people to consult it, and on a free basis. And the thousands of readers of the Newsletter, also distributed free of charge, allow us to state that the artists’ day to day living is no longer experienced by the artists only. The public knows a great deal more...

During these 20 years, we have thus featured and made known to the world over 3000 artists from all continents. Meanwhile, our surveys and reports on the art market, the institutions, the links with creation in general, have enlightened the readers of the WHO’S WHO IN INTERNATIONAL ART yearbook about many a stratagem which, up until then, had remained in the shadow or had not been normally associated with the world of artists. To name but a few: An introduction to the contemporary art market; A guide to patronage among the business community or the humanistic side of the business community; Art fairs a quarter of a century later or more: for whom, what for?; Art gallery owners and artists: do they still have anything to do with one another?; Are artists condemned to disappear?; In praise of the contemporary practice of art; Who buys art nowadays? etc.

Testimonies from artists concerning the positive part played by our publications are numerous. We are preparing a kind of golden book to show them during the year of our 20^th anniversary, in a future Newsletter. However, we cannot conclude without them.

Let us quote artist Marc D. Larivière, whose testimony sums up most of those received during the last few years: “I find it simple and useful (...), very well designed. The artists are flattered in this edition exclusively devoted to them. (...) I must say that as far as I am concerned, the Who’s Who in International Art yearbook is indeed a passport which contributed to the evolution of my career, because for the past few months events are going very fast (...), things are moving at a surprising speed.”

And also, Jean-Pierre Dufour: “I have to say that I am both happy and proud to be featured in a book of such quality, (...) clear, precise, easy to consult, and with a plus: it’s beautiful!”

Dear readers, you will understand that after so many years of hard work (and sometimes lack of understanding) at the service of today’s art and artists, these good words from artists are treats for us to enjoy through their recollection, in the same way as we enjoy yours.

We associate them with the following review, which gathers all the artists featured so far in the WHO’S WHO IN INTERNATIONAL ART yearbook and without whom the latter would not be what it is today for the art world.

Our thanks to all the artists and readers! And let us continue together to shed light on the art of our times — there is still so much to do... benefit.