Glad that you liked the film, David. I think that I was just looking for something else. I did like the woman in the short dress.
Certainly we do not develop in a vacuum, and certainly we are influenced by experts. A big question is who are the experts? Is the supposed expert in his arena?
The artist has the inspiration and the expert/critic tries to describe it.
Agreed, that the artist needs to have a degree of technical skill. How to hold the brush, how to mix the paint, - or how to put notes on a staff for a particular instrument, etc, but then it is the artist who brings the inspiration to life, who manifests the inspiration here for the rest of us to experience. Not necessarily the expert.
The point I am trying to make is that I feel great art has roots in something beyond what we normally see. Great Art is certainly in the eye of the beholder and it can be a pebble, or a leaf, or a sunset. But something that transports me.
Primitive cultures often have no written language. Their language is in their art. Their history is in their art. But make no mistake, in many, if not most,
if not all, primitive cultures, the pieces we consider "art" were
not considered "art" by the so-called primitive people who made them. Not at all. Not something to hang on the wall and "decorate" their homes or caves!
These pieces were working tools. Tools that protected them from malevolent spirits. Gave them fertility for crops, animals and themselves. Helped them understand and maintain their place in their cosmos. Pieces that dug deep into the roots of consciousness.
And they still dig deep, when we are quiet enough to let them influence us. Then we may see a man in a keris. We may feel -- though we do not have the slightest understanding of the thoughts of the people who made and used these objects -- we may feel that common
wordless bond of understanding that we interpret as "Great Art."
Wordless and visceral.
I suggest that experts can certainly open a door, but it is us who decide to go through it, us who decide to spend money and time on old bits of wood, metal, ivory, etc, because these pieces give us joy. They transport us beyond the mundane.
Perhaps this is the difference in an "someone who acquires" and a "connoisseur."
Ultimately as a friend once said, it is us who have to live with the piece.