Last week, Louise Blouin, the inimitable publisher behind the self-branded Blouin art-media empire (blouinartinfo.com, Blouin Modern Painters, Blouin Art + Auction, etc.), sent out a triumphant press release announcing the launch of “the world’s largest lifestyle marketplace.”
Called Blouinshop.com, naturally, the new venture boasts more than 100,000 items that have been carefully chosen by industry experts to suit varied individual artistic tastes, according to the release. Objects on offer range from an $8 Centre Pompidou tote bag to a $14,400 Erich Dieckmann armchair.
So far, it hasn’t made much of a splash.
Meanwhile, if you look away from this spotlight and instead train your eyes on the hulking publishing enterprise she has built over the past decade, you will see it is crumbling.
How many people out there still care about the implosion of the Blouin organization as we know it and its hail-mary mutation into an e-commerce hub? Not that many, it seems. And no one has done more than Louise Blouin herself when it comes to transforming her once formidable enterprise into a punch line. read more