Connoisseur Quotes

“More people should visit Antarctica, metaphorically speaking, on their own. That is one of the conclusions I have reached, one of my recommendations: explore something, even if it's just a bookshelf. Make a stab in the dark. Read off the beaten path. Your attention is precious. Be careful of other people trying to direct how you dispense it. Confront your own values. Decide what it is you are looking for an then look for it. Perform connoisseurship. We all need to create our own vocabulary of appreciation, or we are trapped by the vocabulary of others.”
― Phyllis Rose, The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading

“Du er ogsaa Kunstnersjæl, Skønaand, en Smagens Mand, et Artistgemyt,en Bohême, en Satan. Men du er ogsaa Poet. Fan ved hva du er altsammen, du er meget spredt.”
― Knut Hamsun

“I always liked dearly to hear what he had to say about either pictures or books; because without pretending to be a connoisseur, he always spoke his thought, and that was sure to be fresh:”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Art is the direct confrontation between an irreducible individual soul, unreachable by society, and the facts of nature and human nature. The critic, not the connoisseur, reconstructs this confrontation.”
― Christopher S. Wood, A History of Art History

“[..]You know the problem with connoisseurship?"

I did not. I had no idea there was a problem with connoisseurship.

"It doesn't take into account the artist waking up on the wrong side of the bed. [..] It doesn't consider the really shitty day"

[..] Later it would occur to me, what about the opposite? The Day When Everything Goes Right. The Fucking Excellent Day.”
― Bridget Quinn, Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History