220085 Connoisseurship: a critical approach (Ü) (SoSe 2016)

Over the last thirty years, the notion of "connoisseurship" (Kunstkennerschaft, i.e. the process through wich an artwork or an object is identificated and attributed to a certain artist or producer) has been the subject of many books and colloquia. The question of whether or not such expertise can be considered a reliable science is consistently at the center of these discussions. This topic opens another methodological interrogation that may be even more important to the field: what are the various practices that inform the act of attribution, and how have these practices historically been invested with legitimacy or, instead, called into question? One has to consider the knowledge, the formation and the methods of the connoisseur in order to understand and critically engage with the mechanisms that guide his decision.
The seminar will examine this process. After analyzing the main historiographical sources related to the "science of connoisseurship", we will discuss case studies of objects that have been misattributed by connoisseurs at some point in their history and, as a result, have generated considerable debate on their origins. The focus will be on studying these arguments in order to retrace the broader intellectual and artistic contexts related to these mistakes. In doing so, the course will lead the participants to self-interrogation of their own methodological practices.

The seminar will be followed, on the 22nd of July, by an international workshop. As a result, some lessons will be cancelled over the semester in order to lighten the course load and allow students to attend the worshop.