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Fine Art Connoisseurship and its Reckoning

Processes, Problems, and Appropriate Role for the Fine Art Connoisseur in the Authentication Process

Introduction

The assessment of a work of fine art usually begins with an examination of the medium used to produce the work. For example, if a work is an oil painting, the assessor will look at the type of canvas used, paints, and the stretchers upon which the canvas is placed. Examination of the material or scientific aspects of the work is followed by study of the documentation or provenance indicating where the work originated, who painted it, who owned it, and so on. For example, Fine Art Registry™ is a source for establishing the provenance for works of art, particularly for contemporary art. Scientific analysis and documentation move into connoisseurship as the third step to authenticate a work of fine art. The connoisseur examines the painting in terms of history, culture, style, content, and subject matter. Again if there is a mismatch between the subject matter and the period, or for example the person in a painting which was supposedly created in 1850 is wearing a pair of skinny jeans and spiked hair, the assessment may point to an inauthentic work.

The three-step model of first science, second provenance and third connoisseurship has a logic, historical precedent, and legal grounding to demonstrate authenticity. If for some reason science says that the work is materially incongruous to the time it was painted the process should stop. An 1800 painting with a barcode on the canvas tells the examiner that the work is not from the period and therefore inauthentic. Provenance research would also stop the process if documents found it was produced by someone other than the artist who supposedly signed it. The problem with the third step is that whereas the first two are accepted methods of ascertaining authenticity the third is questionable in that there are no standards for what the connoisseur does, no licensing, no credentials, and, other than experience, no professional designation. The accuracy of the connoisseurship examination depends on the knowledge and skill of the connoisseur and, to a considerable degree, his or her independence and lack of vested interest in the outcome of the authentication. In point the final or third step in the authentication process is the weakest especially when it tries to supplant the roles of the first two. Connoisseurship is at its worst when it presumes that its significance is greater than scientific analysis and provenance. It is no surprise that 40% of all the works in the museums today are of questionable authenticity given that so many of them were "discovered" by the old world famous connoisseurs such as Berenson, Duveen, and so on. The fundamental problem is that connoisseurial processing has not really changed.

The Song of Connoisseurship

Connoisseurship, if practiced appropriately, is a legitimate and important part of the authentication process. The examining of a work of art in terms of the details of how the artist created perspective, color, hands, eyes, or lighting and comparing such points to what the expert knows about the artist is a significant step in determining the authenticity of a given work. Too often, however, we seem to receive the concept of connoisseurship in its creative, or subjective realm.

Brian Peterson, the Director of the Michener Museum in Pennsylvania, described how he knew that a work of art was genuine by stating that "…the work sings to me." Bernard Berenson, a world famous connoisseur whose attributions are found in many museums and private collections around the world remarked that he knew a work was genuine by a strange feeling in his stomach. Thomas Hoving, former Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art stated that he recognized real art by "falling in love" with the work.

Philip De Montebello, present Director of the Met, remarked that he recognized authenticity by "…goose pimples and a cold sweat and whatever you call it happened to me." A trip to the curator's shop in the Princeton University Art Museum a few years ago had the curator respond to, "How do you recognize authenticity?" with, "You just know it." Eugene Thaw, the featured connoisseur for Architectural Digest, remarked that being able to ascertain authenticity in art comes from being surrounded by and immersed in the great works at an early age and by collecting them, from which one has to conclude that only members of wealthy, art-collecting families would be able to gain this ability. Songs, love, strange feelings, goose pimples, cold sweats, intuition, and immersion in art sound more like "evidence" of out of body experiences than facts or data supporting a logical conclusion. Imagine being on the stand in a murder trial and being asked how you know "X" pulled the trigger and you responded with. "I just know it or since I have a funny feeling in my stomach about the defendant, he must be guilty." The court officer would quickly escort you from the courtroom.

Connoisseurial Foundation Flaws

The above examples of connoisseurship ability are not meant to discredit connoisseurs but to represent the asymmetry between providing sound evidence and logical reasoning and the nature of connoisseurship as it is often practiced today. Cindy Hill noted in a FAR® article that while documentation, standard processes and the law ground the purchase of a used car, none exist in the purchase of a one hundred million dollar painting. In point, connoisseurship of this type has developed into a totally subjective activity with collectors, gallery owners, museum directors, and artists bringing in their own approaches or views in assessments of fine art. This development is a natural outgrowth of a field dominated by subjectivity, and creativity working together in the absence of an empirical grounding.

Why should one expect those focused on creativity to respect structure, system and technology when such concepts are foreign to their field. Art demands constant change, originality, not replication, or verification of existing truths. Thus, it is not serendipity driving the course of connoisseurship, but the fact that it is built on a foundation too soft to allow it to become structurally sound and systemically capable of arriving at logical and empirically verifiable conclusions. Subjectivity rules because it cannot sense that there is a more acceptable way.

GIGO and Failures in Reasoning

In computer talk it is often stated that when garbage goes into a program the result will be garbage out. The garbage in garbage out (GIGO) concept in connoisseurial conclusions results from a subjectivity domination producing failures of reason and scientifically faulty processing generalizations. Failures of reason or logical fallacies are evident when connoisseurial conclusions are reached via a set of statements which do not follow or which contradict one another. Scientifically faulty processing generalizations result when conclusions are reached without properly following sound scientific procedures.

Connoisseurship and Its Logical Fallacies

Aristotle, the philosopher and the father of logical fallacies, developed 13 common fallacies relating to meaning, relevance and ambiguity. Others have moved the number to about 40. One of the most common fallacies emanating from the connoisseurial class is argumentum ad circularum (circular reasoning). In the Park West fiasco it was noted by David Philips in a FAR article, that works were sold at sea to buyers with a Certificate of Authenticity - COA authored by the seller. The problem with selling and signing that the work is authentic is that the process is circular in reasoning. What it says is that the work I sold to you is authentic. How is the authenticity established? The COA provided says it is authentic. How do I know that the COA is authentic? It is authentic because I signed it. In point, it is authentic because it is authentic. The curator example above also fell into the same fallacy when stating that you know it is authentic because "you just know it is authentic." Another fallacy in the speak of the connoisseur has to do with composition. The fallacy of composition originated in the first artist who judged other works for authenticity and is common to the art world by art history degree holders passing authentication judgments on the works under their purview. Unless the authenticating artist watched the work being created, the fact that he or she could paint does not provide evidence that the artist knows about authenticating. The fallacy consists of holding a particular or specific attribute and applying this to the whole of a group. Merely because a part of a car is light it does not follow that the rest of the car is light. Merely because one has an art history degree it does not follow that one is an expert in the complete field of art, i.e. authentication, scientific analysis and so on.

Argumentum ad hominem or circumstances of an individual determining the reasonability of an argument looks at Thaw's argument of the connoisseur's wealthy, art-collecting background determining authenticity judgments. The circumstances of a person whether wealth, poverty, prison time served and so on have nothing to do with establishing the truth or falsity of a statement. Merely because one is wealthy and lives in a house with many fine works of art does not establish that one knows about what is authentic art. Thaw's calling forth the immersion fallacy or surrounding of art fails to hit the mark also since it is really a case of the post hoc fallacy whereby "A" causes "B" because "A" occurred before "B". The logically absurd consequences of the immersion fallacy are that if you immerse yourself in a vat of paint you will know about all the ingredients of the paint. Or if a person surrounds himself with books or lives in a library he will become a scholar.

The appeal to authority fallacy was challenged in an interesting court case involving a Calder mobile. A connoisseur representing a dissatisfied buyer stated that as art connoisseur he looked at the alleged work for a few minutes and knew right away that the work was not a Calder. The court argued that compared to another expert who spent months of researching the authenticity the nod of the authority was no longer sufficient to drive a conclusion. In point, an appeal to the mere authority of the expert was unacceptable. The judge could have also noted that the conclusion reached fell under the hasty generalization fallacy whereby a conclusion is reached by using very little evidence to support it.

Authentication and Faulty Science

FAR recently reported that forensic fingerprint experts have determined that an alleged Pollock painting owned by X family was not from the hand of Pollock but a digitally forged one. The significant part of the assessment of the painting by the art expert Biro was how the authentication was processed, or more appropriately not processed. To begin with, at no point was it mentioned how the paint can fingerprint was determined to be a Pollock print. Step one should have used a legitimate Pollock print as the comparison template to match the print on the painting. Just because there is print on a can of paint in Pollock's studio does not mean it was Pollock's fingerprint. It could have been that of Aunt Millie or the hardware store clerk who sold the can of paint. Secondly, Biro should have assessed the paint on the canvas, the type of canvas, the stretchers on the canvas, and how the canvas was secured to the stretchers. If any part of the assessment of the materials demonstrated that the materials were not available at the time of painting, it could reasonably be concluded that the painting was inauthentic. Thirdly, there was no mention that Biro investigated or provided any documentation indicating that such a painting was created by Pollock. Here, Biro could have presented Pollock letters to the owners, or pictures of the work in a catalogue raisonne. Finally, Biro should have provided a step-by-step report indicating how his assessment took place so that other experts would be able to replicate his study for verification. Biro's case might be looked at as an exemplar of what happens when one operates outside the protocol of first, scientific analysis, second provenance research, and third connoisseurial advisement. Jumping the gun leads to significant problems.

Tayloristic fractals are another case of bad science. In a November 2007 review of Taylor's thesis it was noted that there is no relationship between Taylor's fractals which are manifestations of nature found in veins, tree branches, coastlines and so on, and Jackson Pollock's paintings. Taylor's argument was that since Pollock was intentionally aware of nature's fractals via intuition he painted his works to resemble these fractals. Taylor argued that authentication was possible by examining a Pollock work and determining the degree of fractalization. Pollock's works were in the 1.6.-1.9 level. Works less than that degree of fractalization should be construed as non- Pollock or inauthentic. Taylor's lack of proper scientific processing was found in unavailable documentation of how he conducted his experiments for proper verification, no evidence that Pollock intentionally knew about fractals or intentionally made his paintings to reflect fractals, and the use of a group of samples not chosen randomly. Taylor forgets to note also that Pollock made some of his paintings under the influence and thus to argue for intentionality is really stretching the facts. Lastly, under Taylor's standards others have found that doodles made by first graders easily are identified as fractals. The failure to delimit fractals as a separate class leads to the conclusion that fractals may not have a logical identity and may not really exist.

Connoisseurship and its Appropriate Role

No standards, no licenses, no certification, grounded in subjectivity, built on logical fallacies, bad science, and no regulation to prohibit a connoisseur designation creates a field suspect in how and what they do. The issue here is not that the connoisseurship is an unsound process but that connoisseurs bite off more than they should chew which results from improperly moving into the process of authentication earlier than necessary. The connoisseur has much to give in terms of what he knows about the artist, the time of the artist, his culture, technology, history, subject matter, and media materials. The knowledge of a dress style, architecture, mannerisms depicted, political and cultural manifestations and so on are as important as the scientific analysis of paint and canvas, and documentation supporting or failing to support authentication conclusions. Knowing that a style of architecture does not fit with the work is as significant as knowing that the paint does not fit in determining authenticity. The role of the connoisseur is not to jump ahead to be the leader, but to be a team player and to contribute to the process. Connoisseurship should no longer be assumed to be the prime agent of the authentication process but a significant part of the process ultimately leading to a sound and logical determination of the authenticity of a work of fine art. And it should be conducted in a sound and logical way, free from superstition, mumbo-jumbo and nonsense.

— by John Daab  |  April 18, 2008  |  Print Version - PDF (3.38 Mb)

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