Arts incohérents : discoveries and new perspectives

A collection of seventeen hitherto unseen works by the Arts Incohérents movement - a group of anti-conformist artists active in Paris between 1882 and 1893, which paved the way for the twentieth-century avant-gardes - was discovered by chance in a private residence, and subsequently classified as a National Treasure by the Ministry of Culture in May 2021. Amongst the works were the first monochrome and the first ready-made in art history, which historians had believed to have been lost forever. These extremely important pieces of heritage are the only surviving relics of a movement whose other productions - numbering approximately one thousand - have all disappeared. Based on the recovered works, the authors provide a new reading of a movement which had long been relegated to the rank of minor art, and take a fresh look at this unclassifiable body of work.