Method
What a catalogue raisonné actually is
A catalogue raisonné is the scholarly and critical inventory of an artist’s work: every known work, described, dated, attributed, with its exhibition, publication, and provenance history.
It isn’t a coffee-table book. It’s a reference instrument whose authority rests on one thing: every claim is sourced, and every uncertainty is declared as such. A catalogue presenting an approximate date as a certainty loses its entire practical value.
The distinctions to establish upfront
This is where projects fail, and the mistake is paid for years later.
The work is not the print. A photograph as a work is one entity; a print of that photograph is a physical object, with its dimensions, process, paper, printing date, and copy number. One work may have eight period prints and three posthumous ones. Conflating them makes the catalogue useless for both the market and research.
Attribution is not a name. It’s a name plus a degree of certainty plus sources. “Attributed to”, “workshop of”, “after” aren’t stylistic nuances: they’re distinct scholarly statuses, and the catalogue must be able to express them.
Provenance is not authenticity. A documented chain of ownership can attach to a misattributed work. Two registers, two fields.
The minimum structure
- The work: immutable catalogue number, title and alternate titles, dating at its real precision, place, description, series.
- The prints: image, sheet, and mount dimensions, process, paper, printer, printing period, edition and copy number, signatures and inscriptions.
- The agents: people, institutions, workshops — with authority identifiers (VIAF, ULAN, Wikidata, ISNI) so a third party can reconcile them.
- The attribution: to whom, with what certainty, on which sources.
- The provenance: dated events, normalised counterparties.
- Exhibitions, publications, and citations linked to works.
Two rules that protect the volume
The catalogue number is immutable. Once assigned it never changes and is never reassigned, even if the work is withdrawn. A withdrawn number is burned. That’s what makes the catalogue citable: a reference published in 2030 must designate the same work in 2060.
Confidentiality is default deny. Purchase prices and living buyers’ names are commercial and personal data. They must not enter an export or a report unless a human has decided so, row by row.
In practice
- Separate work and print in the model from the start, never after.
- Treat attribution as a triplet: who, what certainty, which sources.
- Assign immutable numbers, and burn the ones you withdraw.
- Normalise agents with authority identifiers.
- Record dating at its real precision — “circa 1962” is information, not a defect.
- Plan for LIDO or CIDOC CRM export if an institutional deposit is conceivable.
Obscura Flow implements this model: work and print as distinct entities, attribution with a degree of certainty, provenance as events, immutable catalogue numbers, default-deny confidentiality, and LIDO 1.1 and CIDOC CRM exports.