welcome to our
SATURDAY EVENING POST
November 9th, 2024
“I do think that art is, fundamentally, about ethics. We keep getting told they represent humanity at its best. But it also represents us at our worst. Many works of great beauty were designed as ideological assault weapons. Many are the equivalent of empty-calorie junk food, meant to neutralize us with pleasure. This is as true in the past as in the present”.
— Holland Cotter
As the art market flourishes with speculation and inflated valuations, the intellectual rigour of connoisseurship is more essential than ever. This discipline, focused on discerning an artwork’s true value through close examination of its formal, historical, and cultural qualities, serves as a vital counterweight to financial concerns that often dominate the field. Connoisseurship’s role in guiding aesthetic, historical, and cultural appreciation allows art to be understood as an ethical and intellectual endeavour, not merely a commodity. As this practice evolves, it adapts to meet the intricate demands of both modern and historical artworks, preserving art’s enduring significance within the art historical canon.
Unlike market-driven valuations that reduce art to commercial appeal, connoisseurship honours the intrinsic worth of art, rooted in craftsmanship, innovation, and socio-cultural significance. Connoisseurship profoundly enriches the viewer’s engagement with art by facilitating a nuanced understanding of both the intrinsic qualities of a work—its formal composition, medium, and emotional resonance—and the extrinsic contexts that inform its creation, from historical to cultural influences. As Pulitzer Prize winning art critic Holland Cotter suggests, this dual approach to connoisseurship is not just an academic exercise but a tool for cultural and social understanding, urging viewers to see art as both an aesthetic experience and a conduit into broader narratives.
Alice Neel, Benny and Mary Ellen Andrews, 1972, Oil on canvas. © The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy of MoMA, New York. Gift of Agnes Gund, Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, Arnold A. Saltzman Fund, and Larry Aldrich Foundation Fund (by exchange).
Consider the portraiture of Alice Neel, whose work exemplifies the psychological depth achievable through a connoisseurial approach. Her sometimes unsettling and evocative portraits, capture her subjects in stark, unfiltered light, reflecting Cotter’s notion of art’s ethical dimension. Neel’s work, shaped by her experiences as a single mother and her socialist ideals, gains interpretive depth through connoisseurship. Her portrait of Andy Warhol, revealing his scarred torso, disrupts his carefully curated public persona, revealing a figure marked by vulnerability. Artist and writer Jarrett Earnest once said: “An art experience is defined by the consciousness of the person who made it disclosing itself to you through the decisions involved in making it…that entails a level of belief…” Neel’s work embodies this belief, allowing viewers to perceive her subjects as embodiments of vulnerability and introspection.
Alice Neel, Andy Warhol, 1970, Oil and acrylic on linen. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Timothy Collins. © The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy The Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner.
Similarly, Kehinde Wiley’s work benefits from connoisseurial analysis that emphasises his interrogation of art historical representation. Wiley’s reimagining of Black figures within the grand portraiture traditions of Western art questions long-standing exclusions within the canon. His Portrait of President Barack Obama, for instance, is imbued with symbolism—a lush backdrop intertwined with flowers representing Obama’s heritage and history—inviting a reading that extends beyond the immediate image. Through connoisseurship, Wiley’s audacious use of vivid colour and intricate patterning reveals his project to assert Black presence within a predominantly Eurocentric visual tradition.
Connoisseurship, in this sense, is not merely about recognizing aesthetic qualities but about entering the moral and intellectual space the artist creates, an experience that resonates beyond mere market value.
Kehinde Wiley, Barack Obama, 2018, oil on canvas. © Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery.
Connoisseurship within institutions—museums, galleries, and collections—plays a critical role in preserving art’s depth and ensuring that works are contextualized within their appropriate historical, cultural, and social frameworks. Through exhibitions that situate artworks within larger intellectual discourses, these institutions allow connoisseurship to inform the public’s understanding, fostering engagement that acknowledges art’s complexities rather than reducing it to spectacle or investment.
Kerry James Marshall’s retrospective, Mastry, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art exemplifies how connoisseurship can reshape public engagement. Marshall’s art, celebrated for its technical competency and its exploration of African American life, benefits from contextual framing that reveals his engagement with historical absence and reclamation. His painting Many Mansions, depicting dignified African American men within a public housing landscape, operates simultaneously as critique and celebration. Through connoisseurial framing, the monumental dignity accorded to his subjects upends reductive narratives around public housing, positioning them as agents of their own stories.
Kerry James Marshall, Many Mansions, 1994, Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas. © Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago.
Furthermore, Marshall’s use of grand manner portraiture, a style traditionally reserved for the depiction of mythological or historical figures, to represent Black subjects, reclaims and redefines conventions of American art. By situating his work alongside artists from disparate epochs, institutions foster a dialogic viewing experience, allowing audiences to perceive continuities and ruptures within the canon. Marshall’s engagement with themes of invisibility and representation, as seen in his subtle play of light and shadow against dark backgrounds, is rendered even more poignant through curatorial efforts that underscore the artist’s confrontation with systemic erasure.
Through such layered interpretive frameworks, institutions elevate Marshall’s work beyond aesthetic appreciation, inviting viewers into a complex engagement with socio-historical critique. Connoisseurship, in this context, enables institutions to frame art as both cultural critique and historical documentation, enriching public interaction with these narratives.
Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Painter), 2009, Acrylic on PVC panel. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Gift of Katherine S. Schaumburg by exchange, 2009.15. Courtesy of MCA Chicago.
In the domain of art collecting and valuation, connoisseurship remains vital, providing collectors with insights into the authenticity, historical relevance, and cultural significance of artworks. Holland Cotter critiques the modern art market’s emphasis on commodification, a perspective Robert Hughes shares, describing it as “the biggest unregulated market in the world.” Both critics point out the importance of connoisseurship in safeguarding the artistic integrity of works within a system increasingly influenced by financial interests.
Connoisseurship enriches the historical understanding of artworks by embedding them within the larger frameworks of art history and cultural discourse. This approach offers audiences a deeper appreciation of the works’ significance across social and temporal dimensions. For example, Artemisia Gentileschi, a pioneering Baroque painter, exemplifies the transformative impact of connoisseurial reassessment. Once primarily celebrated for her technical excellency, Gentileschi’s work has been recontextualized through a feminist lens that draws attention to her personal struggles and resistance against patriarchal norms. Her Judith Slaying Holofernes, for example, is now recognized not merely as a masterful composition but as a profound commentary on power and gender, informed by her own experiences as a survivor of sexual violence. This reevaluation has redefined her legacy, positioning her work at the intersection of gender politics and Baroque art, and prompting contemporary curatorial practices to reexamine similar narratives across historical works.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1620. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Le Gallery Degli Uffizi.
Likewise, Doris Salcedo’s installations, often composed of everyday objects laden with personal histories, serve as meditations on Colombia’s violent history and collective trauma. Her work Shibboleth, a deep fracture carved into the floor of the Tate Modern, confronts viewers with the psychological scars of division, resonating with Hughes’ observation that art strives to make the world “whole and comprehensible.” Through connoisseurship, Salcedo’s material choices transcend aesthetics, becoming a conduit for both memorialization and social critique. Connoisseurship in these cases provides the interpretive framework needed to appreciate these artworks as dialogues that connect individual trauma with collective memory, enriching audiences’ understanding of historical and contemporary issues.
Doris Salcedo, Noviembre 6 y 7, Bogota, 2002, Courtesy White Cube, © Doris Salcedo, © Photo: Sergio Clavijo.
Doris Salcedo, Shibboleth, 2007–08, installation (Tate Modern, London; photo: Nuno Nogueira, CC BY-SA 2.5) © Doris Salcedo.
Doris Salcedo, Shibboleth, 2007–08, installation (Tate Modern, London; photo: Wonderferret, CC BY 2.0) © Doris Salcedo.
“The art criticism has never been an easy one to practice; like any serious creative endeavour, it’s a struggle. But the circumstances are especially challenging now. There are fewer outlets for serious criticism, at least in the print media. And the scale of the art world – and the outrageous amounts of money now involved—has become oppressive; it’s weight that threatens to flatten all of us. In the early to mid-twentieth century, more and more people were being exposed to complicated artistic, literary, musical, theatrical, scientific, intellectual experiences. Those were relatively pure experiences; they weren’t being dumbed down, at least not to the extent that a lot of experiences are dumbed down and diluted today. By now the scale may have tipped in the other direction. The desire for an ever-expanding audience for the arts may be diluting the power of the arts”.
– Jed Perl
Challenges and Evolution in Connoisseurship
Artworks are rarely self-referential, they often exist within contexts imposed upon them by institutions, which may attribute meanings unrelated to the work’s intrinsic qualities. In some cases, this means that curatorial programs or institutional perspectives create interpretations or assign significance to an artist’s work to align it with institutional needs or thematic frameworks. This process risks overshadowing the essence of the artwork, potentially leading audiences to view it through an imposed lens rather than through its own inherent value.
Connoisseurship, traditionally rooted in assessing technique and material, faces challenges in a space increasingly driven by conceptual exploration. Art critic Jed Perl criticizes the art world’s embrace of conceptualism or even “crowd wisdom”, viewing it as a shift away from craftsmanship. This aligns with Robert Hughes’ critique in The Shock of the New, in which he laments the market-driven approach that values novelty and collective judgment of the masses over artistic substance, that the expanding audience and commercialization dilute the power of the arts. These perspectives reflect a broader debate within connoisseurship: how to engage meaningfully with art that prioritizes ideas over form.
Despite these tensions, connoisseurship remains essential, particularly for artists such as Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, whose work demands a rigorous engagement with both their formal techniques and psychological depth. In response to Hughes’ critiques, there is a growing movement to reaffirm traditional connoisseurial values, promoting a more sophisticated, informed engagement with art that balances technical knowledge with conceptual insight.
Lucian Freud, The Painter's Mother Resting, 1975 - 1976, Oil on canvas.
Connoisseurship preserves art’s role as an ethical and intellectual endeavour, offering profound insights into the human condition, historical context, and collective identity. For the true connoisseur, appreciation begins with a genuine love of art and a deep understanding of its intrinsic and contextual value. Connoisseurs recognize the “heart and brain” of a piece—the intricate ideas and craftsmanship that reflect the artist’s vision and experience. They see art’s purpose as transcending market value, aspiring instead to evoke the richness of human experience and an aspiration towards the divine. Connoisseurship, then, is not an outdated practice but an adaptable, intellectual discipline that connects the art world to the cultural and ethical legacies defining art’s enduring impact. Through it, art history becomes a dynamic dialogue, continually enriching our understanding of humanity’s highest creative pursuits.
