The Les Incohérents Story Does Not Cohere

Yeah, no. As I wondered what ever happened since the amazing discovery five years ago of a 19th century monochrome and readymade that would overturn the entire timeline of the avant-garde, and why they hadn’t overturned the entire timeline of the avant-garde yet, I got an update from a greg.org reader in the French art world. There turn out to be major questions about the provenance of the two, seventeen, or nineteen artworks found by Paris art dealer Johann Naldi, and in particular about his story of discovering them in a forgotten trunk and identifying them as lost works from the series of parodic l’Art Incohérents exhibitions of the 1880s and 1890s. An extensive investigation published by Libération in 2022 [archive.is, and a youtube recap above] revealed that the actual owners of the objects are well-known antique dealers, who first reached out to the recognized scholar of les Incohérents—without any mention of the two most significant pieces, the Paul Bilhaud monochrome, and the…