Does connoisseurship matter? Can art only involve the artist’s choice and not necessarily his hand? Can you copyright an idea? These are some of the issues raised by this recent essay by Richard Feigen in the Art Newspaper. An artist launches an idea and then it can become difficult to seperate the idea from counterfeit ’similar’ but no less beautiful ideas.

Connoisseurship is the identification of the artist by his handwriting. But if his hand isn’t there, the handwriting isn’t, and connoisseurship becomes a dead old discipline. Who needs connoisseurs? Why train them? Why not train museum director-administrators-fundraisers-construction supervisors? Who needs museum directors who actually love objects? Why not fund academic chairs in the new language—“artspeak”—to explain it all? But alas, we’re stuck with the single word “art” to define it all.

I don’t think a proliferation of fakes or art being an idea makes connoisseurship any less valuable. Appreciating the real and identifying the fake, however sublime it is, is very important in today’s art market.

We’ve seen Damien Hirst challenge convention (and notions of connoisseurship) in the art world before with his diamond skull. For his newest project, he’s not just creating controversial art–he’s also challenging contemporary art’s business model.

It used to be that art dealers had a window of about five years to sell (and resell) a new piece of art, earning about a 50% commission on each sale, before auction houses would accept the pieces to sell. For his new collection, Damien Hirst is cutting out the middleman, selling all 223 pieces directly through Sotheby’s next week. The pieces are as bold as ever and include The Kingdom, an 8ft tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde, and The Golden Calf, a life-sized bull with gold-plated hooves and horns also suspended in formaldehyde.

This auction is a very interesting move by Hirst; he’s probably one of the few artists (perhaps only artist) who could pull it off. He’s well enough established that connoisseurs know what they’re getting when they purchase one of his pieces without it floating around on the market for a while. Hirst also wants to collect more for pieces up front rather than have them appreciate:

From an article in the Times of London:

“The first time you sell something is when it should cost the most,” he says. “I’ve definitely had the goal to make the primary market more expensive.” He compares a Prada outlet and an Oxfam shop. Why, in the world of shoes, do you pay more for a new pair from Prada, while in the world of art, the big money kicks in only when the shoes get to Oxfam?

I think this is a fascinating comparison–however, one of the reasons that Prada shoes and other luxury goods sell for so much more new is that they do wear in ways that that artwork won’t–artwork can be appreciated in the same way whether it’s new or old, and generally time (or the passing of the artist) makes people appreciate the work even more. Though it’s funny that Hirst should make this comparison, as some of his formaldehyde works have actually worn in ways that traditional art wouldn’t and needed restoration.

If you’re in London, you can see the whole collection on show at Sotheby’s through September 15.

Most people go to an art museum to appreciate fine art and broaden their cultural horizons. Is this still the case when the art on display is known to be fake? Next year the Brooklyn Museum in New York will put on a show featuring pieces of Coptic sculpture known to be counterfeit. Acquired between the late 1950s and early 1970s, these pieces have never before been shown to the public, and their provenance is dubious at best. One example from a recent article in the New York Sun:

One New York dealer, Jerome Eisenberg, acknowledged in a phone interview that he had sold the museum one piece now considered to be fake, a roundel with a border of palm fronds and a central bust. The museum acquired the piece in 1960.

Asked where he bought the roundel, Mr. Eisenberg said that he purchased it from a “very reliable, very ethical” dealer in Cairo, a Copt named Kamel Hammouda. Asked if he knew where Mr. Hammouda got the sculpture, Mr. Eisenberg said that it was against the rules of the trade at the time to ask such questions.

“When you’re buying antiquities in Egypt or Beirut or Turkey or Algeria, you don’t ask the dealer who dug things up,” he said.

Hopefully the museum will provide enough information in the exhibition such that visitors can learn what characteristics make these pieces forgeries–that will certainly foster the connoisseurship of Egyptian art.

[Photo by Dan Diffendale]

Connoisseurship, the art of appreciating fine things and understanding their provenance, importance and distinguishing characteristics, is certainly a worthy way to spend one’s time. Connoisseurs learn about objects that interest them and use that knowledge not (only) to impress people but to make others excited and see what they find so unique and interesting.

Perhaps there’s an element of schadenfreude to it, but I’m always intrigued when self-professed “connoisseurs” reveal a lack of understanding that puts into question the knowledge they think they have. Two upcoming films about the ‘Judgment of Paris,’ the 1976 French wine jury that improbably found a selection of American wines altogether superior to French wines, reveals the conceit on the part of some of the jurors. From an article in Canada’s Globe and Mail:

No nose? Talk about calling the kettle noir. But then, I’ve always advocated calling connoisseurs “cons” for short. I’ve attended far too many professional blind tastings to have much respect for people who boast about their tasting abilities.

Am I being too harsh? I think not. Frankly, to confuse an aristocratic Bâtard-Montrachet from continental-climate Burgundy with a warm-weather Napa chardonnay is the wine equivalent of mistaking a Massenet opera for Cats on Broadway. The tasters knew it, too, which is why some tried to suppress or dismiss the Paris results after the bottles came out of their paper bags

As wines can differ so much by vintage, can we be really be critical of the connoisseur who occasionally gets it wrong? I’d say as long as the stakes are ‘impressing people at a dinner party’ and not ’substantially misvaluing cases of wine for auction,’ it doesn’t matter that much if the connoisseur is occassionally wrong. He or she will be right most of the time, imparting wisdom and helping others learn about something worthy of connoisseurship.

Ahh, wine. Beginner and expert connoisseurs alike can appreciate it for different reasons. I was reminded of this earlier this month when I saw this story about wine psychology in the New York Times. Food writer Robin Goldstein has written a book called "The Wine Trials" in which he found, in a survey of 500 volunteers, that less expensive wines were being rated higher than more expensive wines in blind tests. However, there’s more to the story than that–he found that novice wine drinkers don’t appreciate the same things as more experienced drinkers, and that, as Eric Asimov notes in the article:

Most people in the wine trade understand that consumers have any number of reasons for their buying decisions, whatever their psychological and financial state. Some are reassured by easy-to-understand labels with friendly animals. Others want only naturally produced wines or bottles with a modest carbon footprint. Some are status-seekers and score-chasers, while others are contrarians, or only drink red wine.

The story also mentions how people seem to appreciate wine more when they think it’s more expensive (something we’ve noted on Janus Thinking before). When people are interpreting an item and figuring out it’s value for themselves, how much should the price matter, and how much will this differ among beginners and true connoisseurs?

[Photo by rpeschetz]

The connoisseurship of water is a topic that’s reared its head before on Janus Thinking, and today I mention it again after spotting this article on ForbesTraveler.com, about the state of the pricey water market.

Michael Mascha, a water connoisseur and author of Fine Waters, believes that bottled water is the next wine, and like wine, it has terroir, a sense of place. He says that waters have a different taste and "mouthfeel," and though bottled water has become a commodity, it’s actually shifting back towards being "considered a natural product with its own origin."

On the question of where the best water in the world comes from:

That would be akin to asking where the best wine is coming from. That’s the beauty of what I am talking about… We can have many different waters with many different flavors with many different aspects, and we should really enjoy the differences and the variety and not look for just the best water.

Mascha approaches water like a true connoisseur; I’m still not entirely sure that water is something worthy of connoisseurship (because you can’t tell its provenance solely by tasting it, and it’s freely available at taps everywhere), but I appreciate the attention to detail with which he examines it and the pleasure he obviously gets from it.

Recently the Financial Times reported on Future Contemporaries, a new group founded by London’s Serpentine Gallery for the purpose of making younger people (under the age of 39) enthusiastic about art (and perhaps interested in becoming benefactors of the Serpentine). For £1000 annually, the Serpentine offers members a contemporary art education programme that it hopes will encourage a lifelong appreciation of art. The group has been to private showings in artists’ studios and has had personal tours by artists in private gallery settings. A membership cap of about 100 helps to keep to keep the group exclusive and also of a manageable size for intimate events.

It’s a great idea for a gallery with art worth appreciating to encourage connoisseurship. Oftentimes people need a little guidance as they begin down the road to connoisseurship–and the experts at a gallery are just the people to provide it.

Photo by emurray

There was a fascinating article on wine published in Slate this week: The Greatest Wine on the Planet: How the ‘47 Cheval Blanc, a defective wine from an aberrant year, got so good. It’s about how this particular Bordeaux, through a confluence of controllable and uncontrollable factors, became the Bordeaux against which all other Bordeaux are compared. The author, Mike Steinberger, had the chance to try the ‘47 Cheval Blanc at a wine tasting, and described it as

the warmest, richest, most decadent wine I’d ever encountered. Even more striking than its opulence was its freshness. The flavors were redolent of stewed fruits and dead flowers, yet the wine tasted alive; it bristled with energy and purpose.

As one would expect it’s becoming increasingly rare, but it remains at the top of the ‘to-try’ list for many a wine connoisseur. Read the whole article here.

A new academic study suggests that the appreciation of objects may vary on a biological level in connoisseurs’ minds depending on the price of the object. Research by Antonio Rangel of the California Institute of Technology, published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that participants in the study really thought more expensive wines tasted better than cheaper wines. Functional magnetic-resonance imaging measured greater blood flow and mental activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortices (which registers pleasure centers in the brain) of the 20 volunteers according to the reported price of the wine.

Participants rated the same bottle of wine much better when told it was expensive. In a follow-up blind tasting when they weren’t told the prices, participants were not able to detect differences.

Dr. Rangel believes that this suggests that price is performing as a proxy for collective learning–it’s a heuristic for allowing people to quickly evaluate something’s quality. Another possibility is that people enjoy expensive things more (on a biochemical level) because they think they’ll increase their status and mating opportunities.

Can a successful marketing campaign actually make people enjoy luxury goods more than they would otherwise? It’s an intriguing thought for luxury marketers.

[via The Economist]

The Courtauld Institute of Art, located in London’s famous Somerset House, is celebrating its 75^th anniversary this year.  The Courtauld Gallery has just launched a new membership organisation called the Samuel Courtauld Society, which gives its members greater access to the UK’s most established art world network.  The Gallery has pieces which span 700 years of art history and has the most extensive collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art in the UK.

For various contributions – starting at £500 and going to levels of £5000 up – members of the Samuel Courtauld Society get invitations to private viewings of the special exhibitions held at the Gallery, free access to the Courtauld’s resource libraries, free publications and access to its staff and director.  This year’s exhibitions feature works by Walter Sickert, Auguste Renoir, and Paul Cezanne.  More information on the Samuel Courtauld Society can be found here.

For those who define luxury as something more for the mind than the mantelpiece, becoming a member of an art society is the ultimate luxury experience.  It helps us explore all disciplines of knowledge through a consistent medium, from politics, history, and philosophy to science and medicine.