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Bernard Berenson had one. Michael Jackson didn’t. A good eye has always been connoisseurship’s black box, the cunning apparatus that could sort the visually beautiful sheep from the tawdry, badly-drawn goats. Good-eyes can spot great art works in the shabby surroundings of junk shops, household auctions and estate sales, seeming to be instantly attracted by the glint of diamond in the dirt. A good good-eye can elevate its owner to giddy levels of expertise through the ability to eye ball art and successfully separate the culturally significant wheat from the populist chaff. Its choices are always authentic and important and superior, unless heaven forbid, they are fake.
Illustration: Pippin Barr