Alex's article discusses many aspects of the appraisal process, incuding appraisal process including identification, quality, valuation, the role of science, physical analysis, provenance, and scoring models.
Alex writes the following on identifying an object.
The Journal is published by the Foundation for Appraisal Education, and proceeds support the educational initiatives and scholarships of the foundation.In order to answer the question “what is it?” we usually pay heed to what the owner tells us. However, the owner may not always know. He buys a picture and its provenance, authorship, and period is a mystery. There may be no more information than “19th century genre scene, Continental.” Maybe it is and maybe it’s not. A certain kind of genre scene from a certain art-historical period done in a certain country may be more (or less) valuable than a similar genre scene not in that category. A connoisseur might quickly identify a work of art that carries a uselessly vague attribution and then get to the question “how good is it?”
Although appraisers are not authenticators, the question of authen-ticity may need to be addressed. A Khmer torso that is not really a Khmer torso but a recent knock-off, does not have the same “quality” as the real thing – no matter how well made and aesthetically pleasing. A connoisseur may see details that give the game away. And these details influence the question of quality. There is, of course, a body of opinion that contends that authenticity, provenance, age, and other factors not based on formal aesthetics should be irrelevant in judging quality. For example, the third chapter of Nelson Goodman’s book Languages of Art opens with this tanta-lizing question:
...If a fake is so expert that even after the most thorough and trust-worthy examination its authenticity is still open to doubt, is it or is it not as satisfactory a work of art as if it were unequivocally genuine?
Here is Arthur Koestler on the same issue:
...in our minds the question of period, authorship, and authenticity, though in itself extraneous to aesthetic value (Koestler’s italics), is so intimately mixed up with it that we find it well nigh impossible to unscramble the two.
In my opinion, authenticity is important and is, in fact, a legitimate part of the aesthetic response to a work of art. As Mark Sagoff, the Director and Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland writes:
...authenticity is a necessary condition of aesthetic value. One cannot appreciate a work of art simply for the sake of its appearance or for the feelings it induces: the identity of the object is crucial to its value; one must appreciate the work itself....You cannot appreciate a forgery by pretending that it is a masterpiece. A painting is to be respected for what it is – the creation of a particular artist working at a certain place and time....It is to be compared to other works of its kind.
In the world of commerce, to which appraisers must answer, very few people would knowingly and willingly pay more for a fake than for the real thing – although curious exceptions occur. For example, Louis Knick-erbocker, a meat distributor from Newport Beach, California, purchased a Picasso print in 2006 for $40,000 at Costco. The print turned out to be a fake and Costco offered an immediate refund. But Mr. Knickerbocker said that he liked his “Picasso” and, for the time being at least, did not plan to ask for his money back. Saarinen and Koestler would surely have been pleased
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