by Jeremy Miller | 5 August 2010 | Museums, Renaissance, Teaching, Theory
A show at the Yale University Art Museum points to an issues that many graduate programs seems to be addressing in one way or another. Laurence Kanter says:
“Original works of art have been forgotten. They’re being used as data, without any sense of whether they’re good, bad or indifferent.”
He added: “No one wants to turn art history back 150 years. But we’re lacking an important tool that we threw out the window 70 years ago.”
In my graduate program (graduated in 2007), post-1950s theories of methodology were emphasized, even while we were encouraged to maintain an object-centered approach. Our initial assignment in my first graduate seminar was to perform a roughly ten-page formal analysis from a work of art actually viewed (not from reproductions). As mundane as that may sound, I believe we all learned much from performing the analysis and hearing others do so.
I’m curious to hear from those with recent graduate school experience regarding the approach in their programs concerning the relationships between theory and object / post-disciplinary approaches and traditional methods such as iconography and conoisseurship.
The goals of the graduate program are a factor. Some work in close proximity to local art museums and require museum internships, some do not or cannot.
Faculty reputation and background is a factor. Do the faculty publish a lot of theory, or are they from a museum background?
Geography and money are factors. There are some excellent art history grad programs in Colorado, Kansas, Arizona, and Georgia, but they do not have as many immediate opportunities to see comprehensive collections as a programs in Washington DC, New York, Philadelphia, or Los Angeles. Programs at urban campuses like the IFA at NYU, or well-funded research centers like the MA program at Williams, are in a unique position to be object-focused.
Academic trends are a factor. Many programs discourage traditional methods because departments push grad students to produce professional (that is, *publishable*) work. The rule of thumb is ‘don’t write anything you can’t publish.’ Suffice it to say: your methodology has some bearing on whether or not this will happen.
My MA program worked closely with local museums, my PhD program emphasizes social history (the TJ Clark variety). In my opinion, ideally one should be exposed to both the museum world and the academic world. Also, if you are a masters student in art history, you haven’t *mastered* the discipline without at least being made aware of ‘outdated’ or unpopular methods such as connoisseurship or iconography.
I think the formal analysis assignment is widely used but flawed as a tool for developing visual judgment.
True expertise a la Feigen would have to come from intensely studying not just the single example at the local museum, but scores or hundreds of examples such that you are able to pick up on the details that matter, and ignore the ones that don’t. I believe this 10,000 hour rule (as cited by Gladwell) would be indispensable for the connoisseurial skills in many fields — whether Morelli, a surgeon, a police detective, a golfer, etc., etc.
Plenty of bright sophomores can describe a painting in painfully exact detail and at stupefying length, but lack the base of visual experience to know what counts and what doesn’t.
I would also doubt whether, as long as fakes and fakers exist, connoisseurship could ever be “outdated.” That so many “advanced” academics think it is, is just a testament to profound irresponsibility. Presumably, their reasoning is, why bother to teach a useful skill when you can instead teach students complex pseudoscientific “theories” that allow them to buttress their youthful emotional reactions and left-wing reflexes with a scaffolding of pretend “evidence”?
Some might reasonably argue that it is hard to say whether anything like connoisseurship could ever exist for the entire, dispiritingly vast post-Duchampian school of readymade art. On the other hand, it could also be argued that deep familiarity with the whole artistic persona of a Gabriel Orozco or a Felix Gonzalez-Torres could allow “connoisseurial”-type skills to come into play even when deciding whether a particular pile of yogurt lids, dish rags, Twinkie wrappers, single-serving Dorito bags, Yoo-Hoo bottles, etc., did in fact bear a plausible claim to originate in the “artist”‘s “studio,” in the absence of determinative documentation one way or the other.
One of the seminar courses offered during my master’s program was actually on connoisseurship. In addition to reading the work of connoisseurs (and detractors of connoisseurs) from the last several centuries (Morelli, Berenson, Wollheim, Riegl, Bosse, d’Argenville, Richardson, Friedlander… to name a few), we also put the connoisseurial skills we acquired into practice on objects of questionable attribution in the collection of the museum to which the program is attached. (Well, to a point, since of course we only had a semester to develop our ‘eye.’)
While it’s not an accepted methodology in and of itself, I found the connoisseur’s eye (or more specifically the emphasis put on physically looking at the object) to be a rather novel experience. It’s been my experience–and while perhaps I’m alone in this, I rather doubt it–that it can be easy to forget art starts with the object. The entire discipline of art history exists to demonstrate it doesn’t stop there, of course, but I think it’s quite easy to go off on some tangent about an object and forget to look at it again. Sometimes when you do it’s surprising to see how far (off) you’ve gotten.
This evolution was inevitable. As a scientist with an interest in Art History, the gulf that exists between Science and connoisseurship was made evident to me first hand in a recent experience regarding a Botticelli piece.
Art schools can only benefit from incorporating awareness of the scientific method on top of their education about symbolism, aesthetics and allegory.
Empirical study looks at data gaps with consternation, whereas connoisseurship can brush over ambiguities with florid language and leave us none of the wiser.
As long as people are clear on why they are taking a scientific approach -eg. attributions, dating, as opposed to interpretation of meaning, then the two modes of analysis will have no problem co-existing, and strengthening the factual foundation of Art History knowledge.
H Niyazi
threepipeproblem.blogspot.com
Connoisseurship on art history courses in the U.K. is a rare thing. I can think of only a few people who would teach it, including me- and probably under the guise of something like ‘Art History Methodologies’ or similar. Now, the connoisseurship issue seems to have relocated to the public museum where it was in the 19th century. It seems to centre on the debate between “scientific connoisseurship” and traditional connoisseurship, although intuitive describes the latter better. During his tenure as director of the London NG,, in the mid 19th century, Sir Charles Eastlake wrote:
“The term connoisseur “indicates an acquaintance with facts rather than with truths, with appearances and results rather than with their causes. In its general acceptation it comprehends a familiarity with the characteristics of epochs, schools, and individual masters, together with that nicer discrimination which detects imitations from original works. The chief distinction between the connoisseur and the amateur is that the knowledge of the first assists the exercise of judgment while that of the latter tends to kindle the imagination.”
At times in its history, the amateur type has influenced purchases and shaped acquisition policy at the NG, which was evident to me on visiting the Close Encounters show in London a few weeks ago with its parade of fakes, misattributions etc based on personal whim and imagination, rather than judgement. Inevitably, scientific connoisseurship has reacted against the amateur ethos with a vengeance; but as I’ve said before, we do need the intuitive side of connoisseurship to intervene when scientific connoisseurship is used to “validate” fakes, often purchased with public funds.
Although connoisseurship should be taught more to foster visual acuity, it now impacts on moral, economic and political topics, my point being it has greater relevance for other disciplines as well as art history itself. We shouldn’t lose sight of that.
@David Packwood.. I would imagine that a 19thC definition of the term is no longer representative of the bigger picture. Given the increasing reports of difficulties faced by Art History as an institution, I would hope there is a concerted move to make the syllabus something that combines the strengths of both the Humanities and Sciences. If getting an Art History degree entailed some type of scientific or achaeological qualification back in my day, I would have jumped at it. The only thing on offer to me at local institutions was almost entirely dedicated to appreciation of style and allegory, with a pinch of history thrown in. It was quite dismaying!
Hiyaz- Don’t hold your breath where modern art historians and the scientific method are concerned.
I think the only place you’re likely to see a convergence of art analysis and an empirical approach is on curatorial and conservation programme.
But it just occurred to me there’s art crime too- forensics etc, but we know how well that’s going down with traditional art historians!
@David Packwood – it’s a shame these traditional Art Historians are so resistant! You would have a better idea than myself about how well populated and funded art history courses currently are – surely things must be going sufficiently well for them to close themselves off like that?!
funding is drying up fast in the U.K. i think the economic meltdown and re-structuring of universities- forced by govt- might result in greater working across the disciplines. my research is becoming more interdisciplinary, e.g. baroque anatomy and art.
@David Packwood! Everything is becoming interdisciplinary! We’re experiencing this in the Health Sector too! I personally welcome it – I have learnt a whole new set of skills which increase my knowledge and ability to work in different types of jobs. By multi-skilling art history students, I would hope they would become more employable than the present perception is. Did you see this about US college degrees: http://2.ly/cjtn It’s a shame! I hope something can be done about it.