Digital Connoisseurship: A Response to Kent Minturn

Abstract

The author responds to Kent Minturn's earlier article (in Visual Resources, XVII/1 (2001, 127–145)) criticizing a catalogue essay in which Karmel used digital imaging techniques to reconstruct early states of several paintings by Jackson Pollock. Minturn suggested that Karmel had manipulated his source material (Hans Namuth's photographs of Pollock at work) to make it appear that there was recognizable figuration underlying the dense webs of Pollock's paintings, and that this manipulation was intended to shore up the “canonical” modernist reading of Pollock's work. In response, Karmel begins by discussing his working methods, arguing that the editorial process involved did not include the kind of selective cutting-and-pasting that would have yielded spurious figures. He then shifts to theoretical issues, suggesting that Minturn misunderstands the nature of “canonical modernism” and that his uncritical embrace of fashionable theories (such as Walter Benjamin's writings on photography) vitiates the force of his argument.