Catalogue Raisonné goes Digital

Designing a Digital Catalogue Raisonné Based on a Quebec Modern Art Corpus  

Time Machine Supporter René St-Pierre recently published a book covering his latest research carried out as part of his master’s degree in art history at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

Content of the Publication

The Catalogue Raisonné has been an essential tool for the market and research in art history since the end of the 18th century. By preserving the broadest and most complete documentary trace possible of the artist’s work, and of the historical context in which his work was produced, the Catalogue Raisonné is an authority in the field. The study to which this book is devoted is also a pioneer in the field, since no one had, until now, proposed an analysis of digital catalogues raisonnés from modern Quebec.

St-Pierre’s research focuses on the contemporary variations that the Catalogue Raisonné can present in the digital environment, by studying, among other things, the process that presided over the design of the Catalogues Raisonnés of four prominent Quebec figures in the visual arts, namely the sculptor Armand Vaillancourt and the painters Paul-Émile Borduas (1905-1960), Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) and Marcel Barbeau (1925-2016).

By presenting exemplary practices and recommendations, the book also aims to raise awareness of anyone interested in the design of this type of knowledge in the context of digital humanities and the potential offered by information technologies, social networks and Linked Data (Semantic Web).

Intended for a wide readership, this book is informative for artists, gallery owners and art dealers, exhibition and museum curators as well as students of arts, art history, museology, information science and archival science.

About the Author

René St-Pierre holds a master’s degree in art history and a doctorate in the study and practice of arts. He has pursued a process of research and creation using digital technologies since the end of the 1980s. He works as an archivist at the Armand-Vaillancourt Foundation and at the Center de documentation et archives Riopelle, two places of practice allowing him to advance his own company Archiv’ART, offering software solutions for managing archiving, enhancement and research needs for all types of content and documents related to the arts, culture and education.