Thanks for posting this interesting article, Marcus. The Galerie St. Etienne is a great gallery, focussing mainly on German Expressionism and has a wonderful collection of Kathe Kollwitz .
I would just like to make two points: firstly, if, and it seems very much so, the art collecting world appreciates the value of money more than the value of the art then it is a good thing that artwork is so expensive. If, for example, a Kathe Kollwitz sold for $50, it is probably likely that it will get coffee spilled on it, but if it sold for $50,000 then it would be kept as safe as it's monetary equivalent, wouldn't you agree? One sound reason for artists not to under price themselves.
Secondly, it is not the academics that are making a new canon so much as deconstructing the old "white, male, Eurocentric" one. It is true, as Jane Kallir points out, this academic trend has been around for a decade or two and has some validity in the democratic and philanthropic western world.
But she says:
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Although this change in orientation has literally opened up a whole new world of aesthetic possibilities, it has discouraged academics from making qualitative judgements. Scholarship in areas that are useful to the marketplace, such as provenance and authenticity, has flourished, but overall connoisseurship has declined.
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So it seems that this postmodernist ideal is showing its flaws, or more people are becoming aware of how this trend is leading to a dead end as much as Modernism seemed to be with it's Minimalist conclusions. One perhaps should be aware of the major objections to a "white, male, Eurocentric" artistic art - for example, presenting the female nude as object rather than subject, but it does not mean that an artist has to avoid the nude altogether. One should be aware because, perhaps, there may be some validity here. But it is not a question of either painting according to a set of rules or in opposition to those rules. There are more that two choices.
This article is hopeful, intelligent, and we should be pleased that such an important gallery has such a fair, aesthetically-championing outlook.