// essays //
Fall 2006
The Connoisseur and the Curator
Andrew Martin
Among the members of any art world—a community of people involved in the creation, display, and spectatorship of art—the question of a work's authenticity is crucial to the determination of its value. The definition of authenticity, however, varies from person to person and over time. One of the many parameters that constitute an art world's conception of authenticity is the accurate identification of a work's author. Listeners will often value a mediocre composition by Ludwig van Beethoven over a similar work by an unknown composer because of Beethoven's legacy. One common consideration in debates over whether Shakespeare authored all of the plays attributed to him is how a positive identification of another author might change the way we appreciate his work.
For the museum curator engaged in the acquisition of new paintings, the question of the artist's identity carries not only the burden of authenticity, but a heavy price tag as well. In the high stakes world of attribution, a battle of sorts is being waged between the conviction of James Beck, an esteemed Columbia University art history professor, and the convictions of researchers at one of the most important art museums in the country, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A connoisseur like Beck has the ability to determine the date and authorship of a piece of art. The role of the connoisseur is a difficult one, relying on equal parts research, scholarship, and intuitive visual ability in order to separate genuine pieces from forgeries and to correct misattributions. In Beck's estimation, it is not enough to be a world-class curator or a renowned art-restoration expert to practice connoisseurship. He argues that, while those professions may require an eye carefully attuned to the delicate idiosyncrasies of period and style, their titles do not automatically confer the precise observational skills that distinguish a true connoisseur. Such skills are seemingly innate and largely intangible. In speaking with Beck, it is sometimes difficult to understand the difference between his methodology in analyzing a painting and that of the experts he often refutes. Upon analyzing Beck's contentious claims over the last two decades, however, the crucial characteristic of the connoisseur does become evident: the true connoisseur possesses a profound and completely unshakeable ability to doubt the beliefs of institutional "experts."
This doubt most recently escalated into a heavily publicized dispute this summer between Beck and the Metropolitan Museum of Art regarding the attribution of a painting allegedly by Duccio di Buoninsegna, acquired by the museum in 2004 for a record-breaking forty-five million dollars. Duccio was an early Renaissance painter who painted around the beginning of the fourteenth century, and he is regarded, along with Giotto, as one of the most important artists to create a stylistic bridge between the Medieval and Renaissance periods. In comments first published in the London Times on July 6, Beck said that the painting "is a fake based upon indications found in works by or associated with Duccio."1 He cited the general poor quality of the painting, particularly in the form and position of the Christ figure, as well as the supposed anachronism of the parapet in the foreground of the painting. That element, which the Met's researchers and other experts have claimed as the most significant indication of the painting's importance, would mark the earliest example of such a structure in Western art.
Beck's claims brought about an immediate response from the Met, which asserted in a statement that the painting's authenticity was accepted by "virtually every expert in the field" and that "the picture was carefully examined by the museum's curators and conservators before its acquisition in 2004, and later subjected to technical examination that gives the Metropolitan no reason to doubt that this is a masterpiece of the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century."2 Beck responded to this with a further refutation of the Met's claims, denying the scientific validity of the museum's tests and further elucidating his parapet theory. At that point, the story largely disappeared from public discourse, most likely as a result of the Met's decision to disengage from the discussion along with the lack of any public statements by experts in the field seconding Beck's opinion. In October of this year, however, Beck will publish his book From Duccio to Raphael: Connoisseurship in Crisis, a text that might serve to reawaken the debate and, at the very least, will present a detailed account of Beck's theories, enabling supporters and detractors to pore over his views.
As is to be expected, Beck has not cooled his rhetoric since the summer's controversial exchanges. His agitation regarding the debate is palpable, driven somewhat by the museum's and the public's reluctance to address its finer points. "I think that if you put a big floodlight on this thing, they're in trouble," says Beck of the curators and conservators . "I understand where they're coming from." Since their careers are at stake, "they have to react. They can't say, 'Gee golly, we made a mistake. Beck is right.'"
Though he is clearly frustrated by the general dismissal of his claims, Beck does not harbor any theories of ulterior motives on the part of the museum. He chooses instead to view the alleged misattribution as an example of the serious decline of connoisseurship in the current art community. "I think [it] has declined to the point that they can't tell a good one from a bad one," he says. "It's inability. Let's say that they're honest. Let's pretend they're honest and that they're just mistaken."
One would think that the modern methods of scientific testing that accompany any major acquisition would guard against the kind of claims that Beck is making. Keith Christiansen, a curator at the Met, has stated that the under-drawing revealed in an X-ray of the painting ''compares in all respects'' with other Duccio works, that pigment samples were taken, and that the panel construction and paint layering were consistent with the period and the artist, respectively.3 But by Beck's account, the testing in this instance was either insufficient in itself or insufficiently transparent to the public. "The implication of the Met is that science has proved this picture is of a certain age," says Beck. "I accuse them of not telling the truth about that. Science—it might date the age of the wood. But they haven't done the wood test." The wood test he is referring to is a carbon-14 dating examination, which he claims they have not done because it might prove to be damaging to their case. It is unclear whether this test has been performed. If it has, the results have not been made public. According to Beck, the museum is indirectly claiming that the age of the painting has been determined by an analysis of the pigment in the work, the results of which he believes are irrelevant. While certain pigments, such as Naples Yellow, have very specific dates at which they came into existence, the base mineral pigments in paint are usually considerably older. "Pigment is millions of years old. It cannot be dated. And so I think they just slid around this, and they've presented no documentation whatsoever. They just said it."
Beck also takes issue with the details of the sale, which he says have not been made public. On this point, he emphasizes the seeming uncertainty of the price of acquisition, which has been reported in various news outlets as ranging from forty-five to fifty million dollars. "How can you have a governmental or semi-public agency spending approximately forty-five million?" asks Beck. "Is it forty-five million two hundred, forty-five million nine hundred? It is symptomatic, in my view, of hiding some of the background on this situation." Similarly, Beck takes issue with the fact that there is no ownership record of the piece before 1904. "You are buying a painting that has a provenance of 100 years," he states. "That's all it has. So there's nothing to prevent, in terms of fact, that painting having been painted 102 years ago." In regard to who actually painted the piece, Beck's theory seems slightly more diplomatic than his comment from the summer, when he declared it a nineteenth-century forgery. "I think it could be an old wreck that was repainted in the eighteenth or nineteenth century using an old panel, possibly having some fragments of something there [from earlier]."
The Met's response to Beck's theory, as Beck describes it, appears dismissive: he recalls Christiansen saying, "Well, you would have problems," in response to his assertion of doubt about the identity of the artist in July, 2005. But the tenor of this reaction is undoubtedly due to Beck's long history of challenging major attributions and restorations. One of his first public dissents was his vocal opposition of the Sistine chapel ceiling renovations that took place in the mid-1980's.
Beck's argument, which was taken up by a relatively small but outspoken group of art historians and conservators, was that the significant cleaning that was being done to the ceiling frescoes was removing some of Michelangelo's final glazes and painting touches crucial to the integrity of the work. This assertion was dismissed by the official restoration team and eventually by a majority of Renaissance scholars who found the notion unlikely. Instead, the restorers argued that a buildup of soot, as well as glue from earlier restorations, has had the effect of "flattening the forms and reducing the colors to a monochrome that has misled generations."4 While Beck did not turn the general tide in his favor, he managed to spearhead a public discussion that might not otherwise have occurred, and in the process, he earned a reputation as a dissenting voice from the mainstream of expert opinion. Beck engineered a similar public debate in 2004, when he declared that a Madonna painting, attributed to Raphael and bought by the National Gallery in London for twenty-two million pounds, was a forgery.
Beck sees his role in debates such as the Sistine Chapel restoration and the Raphael and Duccio attributions as guardian of the future reputations of great artists. "I don't lose. Who loses? Raphael loses, and Duccio loses," he says. "Why? Because you get a mediocre work considered to be his work. If someone wrote a term paper that used your name and did a crappy job, and then you applied to graduate school, and they said here's his term paper—they'd say he's not very good. That's what it is."
Beck is also the president of Art Watch International, a group dedicated to "defending the dignity of the object" by lobbying for greater transparency on the part of museums during the restoration process and speaking out against unnecessary restorations and overenthusiastic attributions. Beck's stance is deeply conservative in regard to restoration and attribution; he feels that this position is necessary in order to protect the reputation of the great works of the past. The role he has chosen for himself is not an easy one, and it is important to note that although he clearly believes in the accuracy of his individual assertions, his battle is one that is largely ideological. "I'm afraid that since there's such a small number of people at all that are willing to speak out against such a great institution, it behooves me to do that more," he says. "If there were a lot of other people already doing it, I probably wouldn't do it at all. But since I believe it has to be done, I'm going to do it 'till I can't." For Beck, compromise is not an option. "A tenured professor at a great university has certain privileges—he cannot be fired," says Beck. "And I can say the earth is flat, and I can say the Metropolitan is wrong. And if its wrong, and I don't say it, then I have abused tenure. The purpose of tenure is to defend ideas that are unpopular. So in this case, I felt that I have done my duty as a tenured professor."
Beck's position invites the question: does his stance as a contrarian compromise his integrity as a connoisseur? The institutions that Beck has challenged would certainly argue that it does. Indeed, it seems that every time he denounces a work publicly, the response to him becomes ever more harsh and unbending. Yet Beck's insistence on systematic skepticism seems to be a logical one when so much is at stake, both historically and financially, in terms of the spending of public funds as in the case of the Met's Duccio. It is certainly possible that future generations will not look kindly upon our era of insistent cleanings and incessant bidding wars over pieces of art. If this is the case, Beck will come out shining as one of a small minority that had the wherewithal to push against the tide of general opinion.
One must cut through all the ideological questions at some point, however, and return to the work of art itself. Beck's certainty that the painting has been inaccurately attributed to Duccio is based first and foremost on close observation of the painting itself. His primary argument remains based in his belief that the front parapet depicted functions in a way that is inconsistent with Duccio's own work and other work of the era. Beck writes in his book that the main work cited by the museum as having been influenced by the painting under debate is a "much cut down and heavily restored Madonna and Angels." According to Beck, this Madonna is "irrelevant to the discussion because of the immense differences in size, scale, format, function and the Assisi tradition to which it belongs." Furthermore, he comments that "the concept of the parapet, the type and the perspective is fundamentally different between the two works."
Beck also makes much of the fact that Luciano Bellosi, a Duccio expert who has been cited by The New York Times and poses an important counterargument to Beck, has never seen the painting in person. In fact, Beck emphatically argues that none of the experts that the Met has cited in the debate ever saw the painting in person, with the exception of the museum's own experts. Beck has called the alleged Duccio "a poor painting" and has said that the Christ child's "gourd-like head" represented in it is "hardly rewarding."5 Is it possible that in this particular instance Duccio's treatment of the Christ figure simply wasn't up to its usual standard? Beck believes that it is not. It is one thing to claim that the hand of a master is unmistakable, but at times Beck seems to imply that the artist's hand must also be constantly near to perfection, a claim that not even the greatest artist in any medium can possibly live up to.
When asked what could convince Beck that the painting under debate was done by Duccio, he responds, "Well, since it isn't genuine, nothing would convince me." And that is his final word on the subject. If, in the future, the Met is able to produce records that definitively prove the painting is by Duccio, Beck's status as a connoisseur will need to be seriously re-evaluated, and his credibility will be called into question. Currently, however, it seems unwise to dismiss Beck wholesale. Even if he is wrong in this particular case, his role as an authenticity watchdog should not be undervalued. In the case of the Duccio, the value of the work rests wholly on its alleged place in the art-historical timeline, and not particularly on its intrinsic beauty. James Beck is a connoisseur—until proven otherwise.
1 London Times, July 6, 2006
2 New York Sun, July 7, 2006
3 New York Times, July 8 2006
4 Januszcak, Waldemar. "Sayonara Michelangelo."
New York Times, July 2006. pg 185.
For the museum curator engaged in the acquisition of new paintings, the question of the artist's identity carries not only the burden of authenticity, but a heavy price tag as well. In the high stakes world of attribution, a battle of sorts is being waged between the conviction of James Beck, an esteemed Columbia University art history professor, and the convictions of researchers at one of the most important art museums in the country, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A connoisseur like Beck has the ability to determine the date and authorship of a piece of art. The role of the connoisseur is a difficult one, relying on equal parts research, scholarship, and intuitive visual ability in order to separate genuine pieces from forgeries and to correct misattributions. In Beck's estimation, it is not enough to be a world-class curator or a renowned art-restoration expert to practice connoisseurship. He argues that, while those professions may require an eye carefully attuned to the delicate idiosyncrasies of period and style, their titles do not automatically confer the precise observational skills that distinguish a true connoisseur. Such skills are seemingly innate and largely intangible. In speaking with Beck, it is sometimes difficult to understand the difference between his methodology in analyzing a painting and that of the experts he often refutes. Upon analyzing Beck's contentious claims over the last two decades, however, the crucial characteristic of the connoisseur does become evident: the true connoisseur possesses a profound and completely unshakeable ability to doubt the beliefs of institutional "experts."
This doubt most recently escalated into a heavily publicized dispute this summer between Beck and the Metropolitan Museum of Art regarding the attribution of a painting allegedly by Duccio di Buoninsegna, acquired by the museum in 2004 for a record-breaking forty-five million dollars. Duccio was an early Renaissance painter who painted around the beginning of the fourteenth century, and he is regarded, along with Giotto, as one of the most important artists to create a stylistic bridge between the Medieval and Renaissance periods. In comments first published in the London Times on July 6, Beck said that the painting "is a fake based upon indications found in works by or associated with Duccio."1 He cited the general poor quality of the painting, particularly in the form and position of the Christ figure, as well as the supposed anachronism of the parapet in the foreground of the painting. That element, which the Met's researchers and other experts have claimed as the most significant indication of the painting's importance, would mark the earliest example of such a structure in Western art.
Beck's claims brought about an immediate response from the Met, which asserted in a statement that the painting's authenticity was accepted by "virtually every expert in the field" and that "the picture was carefully examined by the museum's curators and conservators before its acquisition in 2004, and later subjected to technical examination that gives the Metropolitan no reason to doubt that this is a masterpiece of the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century."2 Beck responded to this with a further refutation of the Met's claims, denying the scientific validity of the museum's tests and further elucidating his parapet theory. At that point, the story largely disappeared from public discourse, most likely as a result of the Met's decision to disengage from the discussion along with the lack of any public statements by experts in the field seconding Beck's opinion. In October of this year, however, Beck will publish his book From Duccio to Raphael: Connoisseurship in Crisis, a text that might serve to reawaken the debate and, at the very least, will present a detailed account of Beck's theories, enabling supporters and detractors to pore over his views.
As is to be expected, Beck has not cooled his rhetoric since the summer's controversial exchanges. His agitation regarding the debate is palpable, driven somewhat by the museum's and the public's reluctance to address its finer points. "I think that if you put a big floodlight on this thing, they're in trouble," says Beck of the curators and conservators . "I understand where they're coming from." Since their careers are at stake, "they have to react. They can't say, 'Gee golly, we made a mistake. Beck is right.'"
Though he is clearly frustrated by the general dismissal of his claims, Beck does not harbor any theories of ulterior motives on the part of the museum. He chooses instead to view the alleged misattribution as an example of the serious decline of connoisseurship in the current art community. "I think [it] has declined to the point that they can't tell a good one from a bad one," he says. "It's inability. Let's say that they're honest. Let's pretend they're honest and that they're just mistaken."
One would think that the modern methods of scientific testing that accompany any major acquisition would guard against the kind of claims that Beck is making. Keith Christiansen, a curator at the Met, has stated that the under-drawing revealed in an X-ray of the painting ''compares in all respects'' with other Duccio works, that pigment samples were taken, and that the panel construction and paint layering were consistent with the period and the artist, respectively.3 But by Beck's account, the testing in this instance was either insufficient in itself or insufficiently transparent to the public. "The implication of the Met is that science has proved this picture is of a certain age," says Beck. "I accuse them of not telling the truth about that. Science—it might date the age of the wood. But they haven't done the wood test." The wood test he is referring to is a carbon-14 dating examination, which he claims they have not done because it might prove to be damaging to their case. It is unclear whether this test has been performed. If it has, the results have not been made public. According to Beck, the museum is indirectly claiming that the age of the painting has been determined by an analysis of the pigment in the work, the results of which he believes are irrelevant. While certain pigments, such as Naples Yellow, have very specific dates at which they came into existence, the base mineral pigments in paint are usually considerably older. "Pigment is millions of years old. It cannot be dated. And so I think they just slid around this, and they've presented no documentation whatsoever. They just said it."
Beck also takes issue with the details of the sale, which he says have not been made public. On this point, he emphasizes the seeming uncertainty of the price of acquisition, which has been reported in various news outlets as ranging from forty-five to fifty million dollars. "How can you have a governmental or semi-public agency spending approximately forty-five million?" asks Beck. "Is it forty-five million two hundred, forty-five million nine hundred? It is symptomatic, in my view, of hiding some of the background on this situation." Similarly, Beck takes issue with the fact that there is no ownership record of the piece before 1904. "You are buying a painting that has a provenance of 100 years," he states. "That's all it has. So there's nothing to prevent, in terms of fact, that painting having been painted 102 years ago." In regard to who actually painted the piece, Beck's theory seems slightly more diplomatic than his comment from the summer, when he declared it a nineteenth-century forgery. "I think it could be an old wreck that was repainted in the eighteenth or nineteenth century using an old panel, possibly having some fragments of something there [from earlier]."
The Met's response to Beck's theory, as Beck describes it, appears dismissive: he recalls Christiansen saying, "Well, you would have problems," in response to his assertion of doubt about the identity of the artist in July, 2005. But the tenor of this reaction is undoubtedly due to Beck's long history of challenging major attributions and restorations. One of his first public dissents was his vocal opposition of the Sistine chapel ceiling renovations that took place in the mid-1980's.
Beck's argument, which was taken up by a relatively small but outspoken group of art historians and conservators, was that the significant cleaning that was being done to the ceiling frescoes was removing some of Michelangelo's final glazes and painting touches crucial to the integrity of the work. This assertion was dismissed by the official restoration team and eventually by a majority of Renaissance scholars who found the notion unlikely. Instead, the restorers argued that a buildup of soot, as well as glue from earlier restorations, has had the effect of "flattening the forms and reducing the colors to a monochrome that has misled generations."4 While Beck did not turn the general tide in his favor, he managed to spearhead a public discussion that might not otherwise have occurred, and in the process, he earned a reputation as a dissenting voice from the mainstream of expert opinion. Beck engineered a similar public debate in 2004, when he declared that a Madonna painting, attributed to Raphael and bought by the National Gallery in London for twenty-two million pounds, was a forgery.
Beck sees his role in debates such as the Sistine Chapel restoration and the Raphael and Duccio attributions as guardian of the future reputations of great artists. "I don't lose. Who loses? Raphael loses, and Duccio loses," he says. "Why? Because you get a mediocre work considered to be his work. If someone wrote a term paper that used your name and did a crappy job, and then you applied to graduate school, and they said here's his term paper—they'd say he's not very good. That's what it is."
Beck is also the president of Art Watch International, a group dedicated to "defending the dignity of the object" by lobbying for greater transparency on the part of museums during the restoration process and speaking out against unnecessary restorations and overenthusiastic attributions. Beck's stance is deeply conservative in regard to restoration and attribution; he feels that this position is necessary in order to protect the reputation of the great works of the past. The role he has chosen for himself is not an easy one, and it is important to note that although he clearly believes in the accuracy of his individual assertions, his battle is one that is largely ideological. "I'm afraid that since there's such a small number of people at all that are willing to speak out against such a great institution, it behooves me to do that more," he says. "If there were a lot of other people already doing it, I probably wouldn't do it at all. But since I believe it has to be done, I'm going to do it 'till I can't." For Beck, compromise is not an option. "A tenured professor at a great university has certain privileges—he cannot be fired," says Beck. "And I can say the earth is flat, and I can say the Metropolitan is wrong. And if its wrong, and I don't say it, then I have abused tenure. The purpose of tenure is to defend ideas that are unpopular. So in this case, I felt that I have done my duty as a tenured professor."
Beck's position invites the question: does his stance as a contrarian compromise his integrity as a connoisseur? The institutions that Beck has challenged would certainly argue that it does. Indeed, it seems that every time he denounces a work publicly, the response to him becomes ever more harsh and unbending. Yet Beck's insistence on systematic skepticism seems to be a logical one when so much is at stake, both historically and financially, in terms of the spending of public funds as in the case of the Met's Duccio. It is certainly possible that future generations will not look kindly upon our era of insistent cleanings and incessant bidding wars over pieces of art. If this is the case, Beck will come out shining as one of a small minority that had the wherewithal to push against the tide of general opinion.
One must cut through all the ideological questions at some point, however, and return to the work of art itself. Beck's certainty that the painting has been inaccurately attributed to Duccio is based first and foremost on close observation of the painting itself. His primary argument remains based in his belief that the front parapet depicted functions in a way that is inconsistent with Duccio's own work and other work of the era. Beck writes in his book that the main work cited by the museum as having been influenced by the painting under debate is a "much cut down and heavily restored Madonna and Angels." According to Beck, this Madonna is "irrelevant to the discussion because of the immense differences in size, scale, format, function and the Assisi tradition to which it belongs." Furthermore, he comments that "the concept of the parapet, the type and the perspective is fundamentally different between the two works."
Beck also makes much of the fact that Luciano Bellosi, a Duccio expert who has been cited by The New York Times and poses an important counterargument to Beck, has never seen the painting in person. In fact, Beck emphatically argues that none of the experts that the Met has cited in the debate ever saw the painting in person, with the exception of the museum's own experts. Beck has called the alleged Duccio "a poor painting" and has said that the Christ child's "gourd-like head" represented in it is "hardly rewarding."5 Is it possible that in this particular instance Duccio's treatment of the Christ figure simply wasn't up to its usual standard? Beck believes that it is not. It is one thing to claim that the hand of a master is unmistakable, but at times Beck seems to imply that the artist's hand must also be constantly near to perfection, a claim that not even the greatest artist in any medium can possibly live up to.
When asked what could convince Beck that the painting under debate was done by Duccio, he responds, "Well, since it isn't genuine, nothing would convince me." And that is his final word on the subject. If, in the future, the Met is able to produce records that definitively prove the painting is by Duccio, Beck's status as a connoisseur will need to be seriously re-evaluated, and his credibility will be called into question. Currently, however, it seems unwise to dismiss Beck wholesale. Even if he is wrong in this particular case, his role as an authenticity watchdog should not be undervalued. In the case of the Duccio, the value of the work rests wholly on its alleged place in the art-historical timeline, and not particularly on its intrinsic beauty. James Beck is a connoisseur—until proven otherwise.
1 London Times, July 6, 2006
2 New York Sun, July 7, 2006
3 New York Times, July 8 2006
4 Januszcak, Waldemar. "Sayonara Michelangelo."
New York Times, July 2006. pg 185.
// ANDREW MARTIN is a Columbia College junior majoring in English.