Sunday Art Dialogue: 'Verve' Can a Magazine Change the History of Art?

Efstathios Eleftheriades, known universally as Tériade, was already a respected art critic and editor in Paris when he met the wealthy American publisher, David Smart, in 1937. Smart reportedly challenged him to create "the most beautiful magazine in the world." The result was VERVE a lavishly produced review of art and literature that ran from 1937 to 1960.

Unlike ordinary magazines, Verve was almost a portable museum. It featured original lithographs, deluxe colour reproductions, fine papers, and contributions from leading artists and writers of the twentieth century, all alive at the time, and featured an extraordinary cast of contributors with original works reproduced.

Verve published work by:

* Henri Matisse

* Pablo Picasso

* Marc Chagall

* Georges Braque

* Joan Miró

* James Joyce

* Ernest Hemingway

The first issue appeared in December 1937 with a Matisse cover and included works by Miro and Leger pictured here.

Verve helped bring modern art out of galleries and into the homes of collectors, intellectuals, and aspiring art lovers. In an age before the internet, before colour art books were common, and before museum blockbusters and the timing was extraordinary as Europe was on the brink of war yet, Teriade assembled this astonishing roster of contributors.

There were only 38 individual issues, often appearing irregularly rather than as a conventional monthly or quarterly magazine.

This is important because Tériade was not interested in journalism or current events. Each issue was conceived almost as a collector's object. Many issues took months or even years to prepare because of the costs involved.

In a sense, Tériade and Smart were not merely documenting modernism-they were helping create it.

In 1974, The David and Alfred Smart Gallery on the University of Chicago campus, which I visited frequently while studying there, was founded. These photos are from my original copy of the first issue of the magazine.