Anodyne
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
 
JW in conversation with Mark Lewis in 1993:

"I think connoisseurship is an extremely theoretical approach to art, in principle, since it aims at making the subtlest distinctions between (and within) works. I feel that this terminology has just become frozen over the years and has lost the sense that critical philosophy and ideological critique are aspects of connoisseurship. A 'serious' work of ideological critique begins from a concept of the 'valid' and the 'serious' work (or its opposite - counterfeit or kitsch). Connoisseurship and a canon of taste are already present in it. The academic radicals and conservatives have allowed themselves to tear apart a discourse which is more expansive than either of their positions can recognize. I'm not interested in connoisseurship in its auction-house sense and the snobbism of reactionary elites, except where fine empirical distinctions are concerned. There, the critical elite would probably have a lot to learn from a connoisseur-like study of the granular or molecular nature of individual, physical art works, or objects - which is what we artists make--"
- posted by cjb @ 7:48 AM

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