Connoisseurship: Between Craft and Cybernetics (original) (raw)

Work-in-Progress, October 6, 2020

Abstract

A connoisseur is a person who knows a great deal about art and uses that knowledge to attribute artworks to specific periods, places, or makers. Scholarship has expressed skepticism about the claims advanced by connoisseurs, often dismissing their classifications as dilettantish, subjective, even inimical to the “real” work of social and historical interpretation. In this paper Meyer explores the techniques of visual memorization that underpin connoisseurial skill and the challenges which the associated procedures present to the ever more dominant definitions of disciplinary knowledge as propositional and computable aggregates of fact. His case study revolves around the notebooks of John D. Beazley (1885–1970) recently made available by the Beazley Archive Pottery Database in Oxford. Containing hundreds of pencil drawings of ancient Greek vase paintings, the notebooks shed intriguing light on the development of Beazley’s connoisseurship. The struggles he experienced in framing his engagement with artifacts as a legitimate academic undertaking also resonate with the difficulties many scholars still face in coming to grips with the interdependence of cognitive and manual labor in generating new knowledge.

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