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MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

Op-ed: How Elitist Is Connoisseurship? – Some Notes

[++++Something inspiring a reflection on eliticism can, of course, be something elitist. But. In that it is inspiring such a reflection it also might bear the grain of democratization and growing participation, and more than that, more than of having more people taking part in it, a questioning about what might be elitist in a good sense (we all need teachers that know more than we do, we all need ambitions, we all need aims) and what might be elitist in a less desirable way.

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[++++I recall having seen a man on TV, it must have been during the 1980s, an somewhat awkward and shy man who, yet, knew all the streets of Berlin. This was the reason why the man was on TV, to show (and to prove this to the audience) that he knew all the streets of Berlin. And he knew all the streets of Berlin because he had walked all of them. – Is this something elitist? Elitist in a good way? Or in a less desirable way?

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[++++Children have a feel what it means to know something well. Teenagers have a feel what it means to know something well. And the seed for being a Bob Dylan connoisseur must probably have been planted into the Bob Dylan connoisseur while growing up. Children get a feel what it means to know something well for example by playing Memory. They know the map, the hidden map of pieces, and they learn fast, and by learning, if you are child or adult, you get a sense what it means to know something, to know something better, and to know something as if you were the world leading expert as to that something – an expert, a connoisseur.

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[++++The negative connotation of ›elitist‹ is due, not to the knowing, but due to the factor of power. The power of having the right to define what it is worth knowing (seeing, experiencing, possessing), and the power to exclude others to know something equally well. This is eliticism in a bad way.
And the excluding of people of knowing something well is not only due to the excluding people from the processes of acquiring that knowledge, but also from excluding them from the objects that would allow them to acquire that knowledge (given that they have time) all by themselves.

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[++++Connoisseurship is associated conventionally with objects being precious and rare. Luxurious things. But these are conventions of thought. What if we think of connoisseurship not wanting to own these things but only to know them? Cultural things, natural things, human ways. Whatever. The stars of the universe (not, that is beyond our reach). What if we think connoisseurship of being also a field to question what is conventionally thought as being precious and worth knowing (if not speaking of having). Thus also to discuss the reasons why something is being considered as worth knowing (and why somebody is considered as a connoisseur, and expert, a world leading authority, a lumen)?
And what if we think connoisseurship being a field to reflect upon what is being thought as knowing at all, knowing something well, better and best (without excluding anyone from that relation to things that is the result of really knowing something, knowing the differences, but still being aware that what one needs is time, and for having time, resources). This is what we imagine as connoisseurship in a good way. If this is elitist, we might claim that this is eliticism in a good way (and if merely to think about something is yet elitist, be it elitist). Staying aware that it must not be exclusive (and that negative uses of power have, let’s stay realistic, always been part of connoisseurship). But staying aware also that connoisseurship is not necessarily bound to possessing things and to possessing social distinction and therefore social capital (on the contrary: we may think of connoisseurship dismissing all that as vain, because in the end it is about the relation to things, to life). And finally staying aware that what one needs is the most precious of all resources: given that there is curiosity, given that there is absence of all destructive forces that threaten life – all one needs is time (and the power to organize it well, to spare it).

(Picture: DS)

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