Why connoisseurship matters

I knew nothing of art, or its history, and having happened upon a episode of Fake or Fortune, become intrigued and followed it to your website, a new world is opened to me. Every day I read your site, looking forward learning something new. Your work is serving the interest of art, and that can never be a bad thing, no matter how or why it is done.

I don't really care what Mr Myrone thinks about your motives and reasons, and neither should you. I am, by the way, completely agreeing with you on the connoisseurship debate. The interesting thing is that here in Sweden, I have had very good contact with the academy regarding these issues all advanced students are sent to the auction house and to dealers to "learn the facts of life".

Actually, most professors agree with me that it is very strange that you can get a PhD without having the slightest idea how a painting looks from the back. I guess that it is more related to the fact that most students of art history are completely unhirable after only a BA or MA degree, so the universities here are trying to form connections to the art industry rather than dissociate themselves from it.

Update IX - Wowee, over a thousand more people watched the conference video since I posted this. Thanks for taking the time, and your interest, I am very flattered. Design by Chroma Design. Powered by Chroma Insitu. You are seeing this notice because you are using Internet Explorer 6. IE6 is now a deprecated browser which this website no longer supports. To view the Art History News website, you can easily do so by downloading one of the following, freely available browsers:.

Once you have upgraded your browser, you can return to this page using the new application, whereupon this notice will have been replaced by the full website and its content. Why connoisseurship matters ctd. The part which may tell you all you need to know about Martin's approach is this one: There is nothing, I think, radical or outrageous in pointing out that connoisseurship has served to reinforce social difference and further material interests over history.

Another reader has this interesting suggestion: Very interesting, your post today. Update V - a reader writes: I'm afraid I find the connoisseurship debate, albeit fascinating, somewhat predictable and without foreseeable resolution - and I did watch the available Mellon Centre discussion well past my bedtime, and am catching up with the articles in the Art Newspaper by Martin Myrone and your good self.

Update VI - I don't usually publish praise, but this one's too nice: Only you know why you write your blog. Update VIII - a reader from Swedish art trade writes, promisingly: I am, by the way, completely agreeing with you on the connoisseurship debate. If anything, might it liberate our perception of each work in its own right, rather than as part of an overall body of work related so significantly to personality?

Surely the world would breathe a sigh of relief if we could remove the attribution from Damien Hirst's dot paintings? Now that's an interesting thought on our friend Damien, but alas even for him I would always be interested to know who painted the spot pictures ie, not Damien! The fact that Hirst did not paint them, but merely came up with the concept, tells us a great deal about him, his art and the society that buys it, exhibits it and appreciates it.

It is, if you like, a form of inverse connoisseurship - but still the key question is - who created the work and how did they do it? Turning to the medieval point, although I certainly agree with the 'we can still appreciate them' line of argument for anonymous works of art, I don't think that should stop us trying to find out more about the artist.

The desire to move away from 'personality' is where modern art history has taken its cue from much of modern history. From about the late s onwards, art history as a discipline saw a considerable reaction against connoisseurship, and by extension the whole question of making attributions based on visual evidence. In essence, the study of the object, be it a painting or a sculpture, became less important than the study of its context. Some art historians went so far as to declare the very notion of authorship irrelevant, their thesis chiming with the growing trend amongst historians to turn away from the study of the individual not to mention the rise of literary criticism.

And since connoisseurship inevitably involves a detailed biographical study of an individual artist, connoisseurship as a skill became less valued. Some art historians may not like a personality-led approach, and some may. I fall unashamedly into the latter group, just as in my work as a historian I am happier focusing first on the actions of individuals. To explain why, I can do no better than to quote one of my heroes, Kenneth Clark, who said when revealing himself to be a 'stick-in-the-mud'; 'Above all, I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible.

And yes Gombrich has helped to educate me. Beautifully printed too with nice scholarly essays at the end of the book, on each of the paintings from which the details are derived. Yes please go into lit. Interesting debate and I have a partial answer to your question. He hasranged more widely in the field and refi ned it more thoroughly than anyotherscholarint hearea.

Thirty-one years earlier,in , he wrote: 'Ons beeld van de onrwikkeling der Anrwerpse composirieschilderkunsr in de zevent iende eeuw is, behalve Vt war het oeuvre van Rubens, Van DyckenJordaensaangaat,weinigduidelijk. Voor eenbc:langrijk gedeelte is dit re wijten aan hetfeic dac veclvandeschilderijendiedoor Ancwerpseschilders van het tweede plan zowar in de schaduw van de grote kunstcnaarstri rs van de Scheldestad werden uitgevoerd nooic gepub-li ceerdzi jngeworden,jazichinheelwat gevallen onder foutieve benamingen of als anon-ieme smkken in minder bekende kerken, parti-culiere verzamelingen ofmoeilijk coegankelijke muscumdepors bevinden.

He rectified themistakesandfilledthelacunaewith energy. Hescouredtheremotechurches, penetratedtheprivatecollections,and foundhiswayintotheobscuredepotsin order to reattribute the works and refine or consolidatetheoeuvresof thethenlesser known Flemishmasters. They were'lesser-known'then, but now weknow them with vastlygreaterrefinementthanwhen Vlieghe fi rst began publishing his articles, beginning with hisinvestigations of David Teniers II and Ill precisely in It was precisely in the area of history painting -once, of coursethe most important of the genres, but now most neglected of all- that Vlieghe made hismost significant contribu-tions.

He did so thanks to his incomparable combinationof documentaryandvisual skills- justwhatBerenson,inhisclassic essayonthetaskoftheconnoisseur demanded6- aswell,of course,ashis keen senseof whothe important figuresoutside the greattrio ofRubens van Dyck andJor-dacnsactuallywere.

Our understandingof the visual culture chat produced these three hasbeenimmeasurablyenhancedby Vlieghe's own work. In this senseconnois-seurshiphasactuallyenabledthestudyof whatistoooftenregardedasthemodern replacementoftraditionalarthistory, namelychat of 'visual culture', ad iscipline thatpretendstobenewbutinfactrests entirely on some of the most characteristic skills and interests of art history. Indeed,al readyinthefirstofthe benchmarkarticlesfromjustcited, Vlieghemadefi.

Ontheotherhand,whenit cameto ErasmusQuellinus,Vl ieghepoi ntedly expandedandcorrectedthe picrure given by J ean-Pi erre de Bruyn in his monograph onthatpai nter.