Want: 100 Postcards from the Collection of John Kasmin

by John Kasmin (Contributor)

Want presents 100 postcards of beggars belonging to the legendary art dealer John Kasmin. A pivotal figure in postwar British culture whose gallery showed the likes of Frank Stella and David Hockney, Kasmin has built a collection of predominantly nineteenth-century postcards to rival the impressive holdings of such collectors as Anthony d'Offay and Tom Phillips.
John Kasmin (b. 1934) ran his own London art gallery from 1963 to 1992, showing the work of some of the most important artists of the period. Today he collects antiquities, tribal art, photography, and postcards. He lives and works in London.

100 pages, Paperback

First published September 2, 2013

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of turn-of-the-century postcards of beggars, mainly from France and Asia. The subject of beggars apparently made a sizable genre in the postcard business, which saw sales "by the hundreds of million worldwide" during the first decade of 1900 alone. That said, the destitute men, women, and children shown here are not romanticized or depicted as cretinous subhumans but seemed to serve as an emotional salve between sender and receiver. . . A curious, unsystematic look at a certain period of time.