Ethnography of the Expertise

Interesting times for putting together an Ethnography of the Expertise. And I am referring to the current (November 2016) general dawn of media experts and journalists. A golden time, one might say, for observing dawn of experts (and how expert’s failure is explained/explained away). But I am looking at it more soberly: it’s always a good time to observe expert’s failures, as well as expert’s successes, and how both are explained (and explained away). Because expertises are ubiquitous.
We focus at the art expertise, and we also see it as a type (see below our ›typology of the art expertise‹). And we are looking at the subject more generally. Because this Ethnography is meant to be part of our Book of Expertises.
Expertises are part of any play of power, and this is why the subject is more generally relevant as it might seem at first. A history of power could be written as a ›literary history of the expertise‹. But not to forget: expertises do not always manifest in shape of texts. And there is more, as far as the invisibility of power is concerned. Institutional rules, according to which expertises are meant to be written or uttered, institutional rules that are challenged by more informal expertises. And there is also a more informal rule of the expertise: expertizing without explicitly agreed-to rules, one might say. All not generally visible or graspable.
In a word, it is about the field of power, and as far as the field of science and general knowledge is to be seen as a field of power as well. Our paradigm is and remains the art expertise. But here it is about more, about the art expertise as a paradigm. A paradigm of what? Let’s say: of the voice of power. Definatory power. Because in any written expertise it is becoming manifest power. And at the same time, in manifesting itself, power is becoming visible. To be scrutinized, in its presumptions (or pretensions). By other experts. Or by mere observers of power, being played out in the field of knowledge.

Art Expertise, Typology of:

upcoming

Confirmation Bias:

See: The Unique Property in the History of Connoisseurship

Curatorial Files (in museums):

This is where, very often, expertises, transcriptions of expertises and the like can be located.

Gestural Expertise:

upcoming

Goya:

See: D. Angulo Ińiguez, Una ›expertise‹ de Goya sobre un supuesto dibujo de Correggio, in: Archivo Espańol de Arte 14 (1946), pp. 169-172

Habilitationsgutachten, The:

upcoming

Historians and Expertises:

If we shift our focus from looking at art historical expertises to looking at expertises provided by historians in general, we realize that this is another extraordinarily important field. See the memoirs of the (notoriously prolific) Swiss historian Georg Kreis (Vermessene Zeiten. Meine Erinnerungen, p. 321): »Und anderes: Bücher schreiben war bloss Nebenbeschäftigung. Das umfassendste Oeuvre dürften die vielen, vielen Gutachten sein, die im Laufe der Zeit geschrieben worden und alle bei der laufenden Liquidation ohne nochmalige Konsultation im Schredder gelandet sind. Im Falle meines Lehrers [Herbert] Lüthy habe ich darauf hingewiesen, dass diese Textgattung ein substanzieller Fundus zum Denken eines grossen Geistes wäre. In meinem Fall widme ich hier dieser Produktion bloss ein paar Zeilen, um darauf hinzuweisen, dass dies ebenfalls gemacht werden musste.« Expertises, as every academic knows, are crucial as to academic careers, but in the context of his memoirs Kreis also recalls the writing of an expertise assessing the quality of a radio feature that had been dedicated to a sensitive historical issue (p. 156).

Knowledge/Illusion of Knowledge:

One reason more to study the history of expertises as a textual genre: because history, that is, retrospective knowledge, does, very often, reveal the pretensions of those who believe to know. See also: Power/Illusion of Power (and keep in mind that also history as a textual genre does know its pretensions).

Literary History of the Expertise:

Genre that seemingly does not exist (it does exist, but someone has to write it). We know of the experts, but generally we do not get to see their written expertises. It is symptomatic that we have essential readings on power of the experts, but no one, seemingly seems to be interested to scrutinize how exactly these experts exert power. Invisibly to the public, one does assume. By their mere opinions or judgments, one does hear. But this is a half-truth. Even in the field of art, our field, written expertises do exist, not everyone does usually get to see them, but while those who write on expert power seem usually to assume that the expert is a kind of black box (only he does know what exactly he recognizes in what), and this assumption, of course, supports, the power of the expert, it endorses him with power. It’s your own fault if you do not ask. Ask him (or her) to explain judgments and opinions. It is as simple as that (given that you don’t want to accept unquestioned expert’s power).

Essential readings concerning the experts of various fields: Gabriele Goettle, Experten, Frankfurt am Main 2004; Macht und Ohnmacht der Experten, Merkur 66 (Themenheft) (September/Oktober 2012). See also ›Historians and Expertises‹.

Noteworthy Expertises in History (I):

The painter Paul Delaroche, giving his expertise on the Daguerreotype. See: Steffen Siegel (Ed.), Neues Licht. Daguerre, Talbot und die Veröffentlichung der Fotografie im Jahr 1839, Paderborn 2014, p. 229.

Plot:

The history of connoisseurship does know a plot of forgers with the aim to produce fake expertises by the German connoisseur Wilhelm von Bode.

Power/Illusion of Power:

Can any expertise per se be seen as exuding expert’s power? This, very often, might be an illusion. Because often expertises rather can be seen as the expression of expert’s powerlessness. Because decisions are made simply on other premises than expertises (while, all the same, it is suggested that decisions are made on basis of knowledge, expressed in expertises).