Chapter 13: Clairvoyants and Necromancers
Detail: the figures — Turner’s distinctive style
“The accepted expert today needs mainly to be a good cataloguer,” Bob wrote. “They largely exist apart from old-fashioned connoisseurship.”
If someone collects into one catalogue the entire body of an artist’s accepted work, the same person becomes the gatekeeper. What happens when the gatekeeper is wrong?
The catalogue raisonné is both bible and prison. It defines the artist’s oeuvre—and condemns everything outside it.
This is an excerpt. Read the full chapter in Art World’s Dirty Little Secret.