Who is the author of the above picture? – Is it the director or the cameraman (or -woman) of the fine John Baldessari documentary This Not That, from which I have taken this picture? Is it also the hand of John Baldessari’s assistant on the left, acting in this very picture? And who did design this architectural model for the John Baldessari exhibition that, here, is still in preparation? Is John Baldessari, who does appear on the right, the actual author of this picture as a whole (because this is obviously also about him, and the picture might be a picture in his very spirit)? And what about me? Am I, who is asking all these questions (and who did process the above picture also technically) now also some kind of author? Do I have a claim to that?

Things get even more complicated if we recall the Commissioned Painting series by John Baldessari. Commissioned by him, but executed by various ›Sunday painters‹, after an idea by John Baldessari. The paintings do all show a hand, pointing to something. And, blessed be old-fashioned connoisseurship, the hand may also be interpreted as referring to the concept of authorship, that is: to the actually executing hand of the respecting picture (and, at the same time and as being part of the subject matter, drawing the attention from the ›handwriting‹ of the particular executing hand, the particular hand of a particular ›Sunday painter‹).

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Now, what do we make out of this mess? Well, modern day connoissseurship, still guided by the idea of dividing hands of executing authors, has to face the question what authorship is, what the concept of authorship, does mean at all, and to reflect about this idea simply more intensely. A couple of years ago the art historian Felix Thürlemann has reminded us of the fact that old-school connoisseurship tended and still tends neglect the fact that also minds are or could be named ›authors‹ of pictures, even if the mind does not accomplish a picture (or does it, if the mind is guiding the hand?). Thus one might ask: What about the ›dividing of minds‹? And what relevance are we supposed to give to this?
And one may finally ask if modern day connoisseurship, mainly concerned with Old Masters and not with Concept Art, is prepared at all to face a multi-dimensional concept of authorship that actually is not something new: It might have existed in Renaissance days. And it’s about the guiding spirit, about the mind (or several guiding, and possibly conflicting minds), it’s about various hands, and various techniques of execution and reproduction. And last but not least: it is about acts of interpretation, not only after the fact, but also as being part of artistic processes, of creating what is called today an Old Master painting. Old Master what? What old-fashioned brand is that? What simplification? And: Is it a necessary simplification at all? Who is in need of this simplification?
Does it sound cynical, if we say that it may be rather good, if in most cases we know little, if not to say nothing about the real complexity of authorship, that manifests itself, that might even manifest itself in a picture that we call being by Leonardo, by Leonardo’s hand? But this is what Postmodernity has done to connoisseurship: it has brought the question of authorship, of multi-dimensional authorship back. A question that in many, many cases cannot be solved satisfactorily due to scarce historical knowledge as to the artistic process. But this is part of the problem. One cannot (or could not) actually pretend any longer that it could be solved (all screens: This Not That).

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