Pow! Right in the Eye!

"Now published in English for the first time, Weill’s fast-paced and punchy account of her gallery’s first 25 years of exhibitions is a who’s who of emerging artists in early-twentieth century Paris, the collectors who bought their work, and how much they paid. . . .She paints a clear portrait of how modern masters like Metzinger and Matisse, alongside lesser known painters like Émilie Charmy, shook up modern art and modern culture even before there was a market for their work." -- Maggie Taft * Booklist *
"Recently translated as Pow! Right in the Eye!, Weill’s autobiography was clearly intended as a provocation. ‘Mlle Weill has a long memory and doesn’t suffer fools gladly,’ one newspaper warned in 1931. In a chronicle of her struggles in the art world over the past three decades, Weill pays tribute to the friendships that sustained her and the artists she loved – while also taking aim at the many who had betrayed and underestimated her. Above all, it exuded her spirit of determination, summed up in her credo: ‘I WILL HANG ON!’ . . . Pow! is also indispensable because the archives of the Galerie Weill have all been lost. . . . Pow! offers many vignettes of dealers, collectors and especially the artists for whom Weill was an early champion. It was quite a roll-call: the sandal-wearing lothario Kees van Dongen; Diego Rivera, who strutted into Paris like ‘Gulliver among the Lilliputians’ and quickly made enemies (‘I could easily imagine him putting out a fire by pissing on it’); and cheery, sincere Raoul Dufy, who restored her faith in ‘the painters of tomorrow’." * Apollo *
"The overall message of Pow! is one of resistance in the face of an elitist, male-dominated art world." -- Alex Greenberger * ARTnews *
“'A collection of paintings isn’t like a stock portfolio,' the Parisian art dealer Berthe Weill declared in her 1933 memoir, Pow! Right in the Eye! She was lamenting that novice collectors of the era were overly concerned about whether the value of her emerging artists would rise. 'I was afraid they had neither confidence nor perseverance,' she wrote." * New York Times *
"This welcome publication, handily digestible in its trim size, includes a number of useful sections and contextual aids to shepherd the reader through the colourful and subjective reality of Weill’s Paris. . . . Written in French punny slang, and admirably translated by Rodarmor . . . one is reminded that translators have an important, and under-explored, role to play in current art market studies, introducing narratives and historical characters to wider, critical audiences, and thereby enabling an enriched pan-European and trans-Atlantic narrative. . . . What Weill was good at was making history, and Pow! admirably demonstrates how." * Modernist Review *
"This is a charming, lovingly produced book that makes it clear that
despite the 'aesthetic revolution of eye-catching splendor' that defied
the ordinary, the fickleness of art, 'too subject to the whims of
speculation,' took years to make a dent in." * Enchanted Prose *
“Pow! Right in the Eye! reveals the visionary trajectory of Berthe Weill’s life and work. Incredibly open to taking risks, Weill exhibited many of the twentieth century’s greatest artists while they were still early in their careers. This wonderful book is an urgent protest against forgetting this great gallerist and her journey of endless experimentation.” -- Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Galleries, London
“Berthe Weill changed the course of art history. With her memoir, a fantastically idiosyncratic and idiomatic adventure that is part confession and part invective, she rewrites that hallowed history as a telling corrective that anyone who cares about art, then and now, needs to read. Every twist and turn here reveals far more than simply an in-the-trenches account of the difficulties of presenting the young and new to an indifferent world—it is a stunningly humble self-portrait of the extreme disadvantages faced by an underprivileged Jewish woman confronting the issues of class, anti-Semitism, and sexism, as elegant and sturdy as Picasso’s famous portrait of her." -- Carlo McCormick, critic and curator
“Berthe Weill’s compelling memoir is a raucous and often humorous saga of a courageous champion of avant-garde art in Paris during the early twentieth century. The story of the first gallery dedicated to contemporary emerging artists—founded by a woman amidst a market-driven, all male art world—continues to resonate strongly to this day.” -- Paula Cooper, Paula Cooper Gallery