that should not surprise you. I’m an American, and we as a breed tend to praise humility and look down on arrogance. Pretension, though, is a hot-button issue for me, something that never fails to get me riled up and ready to blog a rant. Pretension can be found anywhere, but nowhere is it so prevalent as in the art world, a planet peopled almost entirely by pretentious poseurs, snooty hangers-on, and long-winded pontificators, along with a select few of genuine talent.
And never, never, have I seen such a display of pretension like the one in this week’s TNR cover story (subscription required), an article bemoaning how crass commercialism and pop culture have made the art world lose its collective mind. I should have known I was in for trouble when the author (Jed Perl) said, in the third paragraph:
The people who are buying and selling the most highly priced contemporary art right now–think of them as the laissez-faire aesthetes–believe that any experience that anyone can have with a work of art is equal to any other. They imagine that the most desirable work of art is the one that inspires a range of absolutely divergent meanings and impressions almost simultaneously.
[...]
The paintings by Currin and Yuskavage that are now going for hundreds of thousands of dollars are engineered for an audience that believes that a work of art can satisfy radically disparate and even contradictory attitudes and appetites, and satisfy them consecutively or concurrently– it hardly matters. A painting is simply what everybody or anybody says it is, what everybody or anybody wishes it to be.
with palpable outrage. As if art is anything but in the eye of the beholder. Now, let it be known that I have never been a fan of modern art: I think of Pollock’s work as so many paint smears, and I’m not even going to start on giant rubber conveyor belts cut into strips and then arranged at the curator’s whim at every museum or gallery stop, or 6′ by 8′ rooms with an inch of dirt on the floor. Nevertheless, I am willing to respect, as much as I might not like it, that in someone’s eyes, somewhere, these pieces resonate with something, and can therefore be called art. OK, not the latter two, because to me they are just examples of those pretentious poseurs at work, but I can accept that Jackson Pollock was an artist, and a much-loved one.
If the article started out snooty, it just went downhill from there. Filled with obscure artist name-dropping, unnecessarily large words (including dialectical, incunabula, and painterly—an immediate sign that this discussion about art is going to be meaningless), and increasingly incomprehensible sentences, it was an exercise in just the sort of arrogant, New-York-City-is-the-center-of-the-world attitude that sets my teeth on edge. Here’s how the slide into hell began:
It hardly matters that what Currin doesn’t know about figure painting would fill volumes, since his collectors know even less, if that is possible. (What precisely is it that Currin doesn’t know? For starters, he does not understand that volume in representational painting can be–and to some degree, must be–generated through the power of contour as a two-dimensional expression of three-dimensional experience.)
Huh? What does that even mean? It took me three tries to even get through that last sentence, and another few to get to the point where I thought I understood what he was trying to say. I think. I’m feeling pretty bad by this point—not even halfway through the article. But then, to add insult to injury, Jed says:
One of the strange facts of our time is that although Picasso and Mondrian and Pollock are household names, the middle-class public has never entirely accepted modern art, never fully embraced its mystery and its magic. Even in the face of this deep distrust, however, the public has assimilated the old bohemian belief in a community of artists as a sort of freely established aristocracy, perhaps seeing here another version of the “democracy of access.”
So now I’m a middle-class philistine, incapable of understanding high art but nevertheless possessing a deep and unshakable belief in the inherent superiority of a community of artists? I don’t think so, buddy boy.
But let’s continue on. From here on, the article degenerates into more name-dropping and waxing poetic about modern art:
On West 22nd Street, the panels were black and white, and I was especially taken with two vertical works in which the tension between a single curved edge and a single angled edge yielded visual music, as if two strings had been plucked to create two sonorous sounds.
and:
Still, in these dark times you could receive an education if you walked from Freud’s show of figure paintings over to Currin’s folly a few blocks south. Freud’s manner of modeling the figure with an encrusted pileup of paint may finally be judged a misunderstanding of modernism; his celebration of the painted surface, while probably meant to clarify representational structures in ways we know from the work of Soutine and Braque, amounts to little more than a series of angsty decorative flourishes. But Currin understands so little about pictorial conventions, whether Old Master or high modern, that you cannot even begin to speak about his work in terms of a misunderstanding of modernism.
Or how about this?
This fall, Thornton Willis, a veteran painter, showed some wonderfully persuasive abstractions at Elizabeth Harris, comminglings of triangular forms, neither exactly crystalline nor exactly opaque, that suggest an emotional terrain at once rambunctious and saturnine.
Degenerates, in fact, into a morass of meaningless drivel. Think he’s done? Not by a long shot. He rambles some more, and then teases us with some of his actual point, viz:
And why on earth shouldn’t it be possible to enjoy The Sopranos and Sex and the City, which we take in with thousands of other people, and also the new work of an abstract painter that may be known to no more than a hundred? The trouble starts when people begin to imagine that all these experiences are equal.
[...]
The biggest danger currently faced by people who love painting and sculpture is this unitary view of culture, which in practice amounts to the view that all culture is, or should be, popular culture.
As unbelievably arrogant as that is, it is at least germane to the gist of the article, which is more than I can say about at least 50% of its text. But we can’t have that, so it’s back to the rambling for a while, until:
I am as tired as the next person of the high culture versus popular culture debates that obsessed intellectuals for much of a century.
Oh, really, Jed? You’ve been prosing on for 5 pages, but you’re tired of the high culture vs. pop culture debate? Not as tired as I am.
There was a deep vein of self-congratulation that ran through those discussions, in which the literati showed off their in-depth knowledge of the other side of the tracks.
He says, deadpan. Now, that’s ironic. As ironic as a bunch of people who don’t know the meaning of the word nevertheless dropping it into conversation at every opportunity, or, indeed, writing songs about it.
Sorry. Digression. Back to the battle, eh? Actually, let’s not. It’s just a few hundred more words of rambling, incredible arrogance. Now let’s get to my point. What I got out of this article was that (a) John Currin sucks (and really, he does), and (b) Jed Perl is a prosy bore who is so impressed with the breadth of his own vocabulary that he had to spend 6 pages sharing that fact with the world. Was it such a slow news week that TNR had to devote 6 pages of about 30, a full 20% of their issue to this, this…crap? There wasn’t anything more important to write about, like, say, the late-breaking developments on the leftovers growing mold in my fridge? Jesus.
Prachee said:
With respect, perhaps you are a philistine when it comes to high art.
While I certainly feel the same way as you about the pile of dirt on the floor and smears of paint, I’m convinced that the community of people who are truly interested in, entertained or moved by this kind of art see something in it that is not intuitive to me.
You yourself assign value to writers and their works on your book blog, giving praise or criticism as absolutes in a way that suggests that _that_ form of art is certainly NOT in the eye of the beholder. You thereby put forth an implied, and not necessarily intended, judgement of the people who can’t tell the difference.
Perhaps when it comes to the art you discuss above, _you_ can’t tell the difference.
February 1st, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Richa said:
I never said I wasn’t. I said I’ve never been a fan of modern art, and I’m certain this guy knows a hell of a lot more about “contour as a two-dimensional expression of three-dimensional experience” than I do. I certainly admit that I’m not qualified to make judgements on a work of art on a purely technical basis, just as I’m not qualified to judge the technical merit of the atonal nightmares that pass as much of modern classical composition these days. That said, I, as a consumer of the art, am certainly qualified to say whether or not I like it. I wasn’t taking issue with the author’s assertion that Currin isn’t very technically skilled.
My issue with the philistine bit was the arrogance with which he made the statement that “the public has assimilated the old bohemian belief in a community of artists as a sort of freely established aristocracy”, or his assertion that you can assign a merit value to the “cultural experiences” of watching The Sopranos* vs. looking at a Mondrian painting. No one is more qualified than another to do that. It’s purely subjective. He may be more qualified than I am to appreciate high art, but he’s certainly not more qualified than I am to appreciate and enjoy “high culture”, a concept in itself I object to.
Not having Ph.Ds in sociology, anthropology or philosophy (a distinction, I might add, shared by Jed Perl), I would nevertheless assert that culture is culture, and you can’t say that one type of culture is “better” than another. That’s a value judgement made on a non-quantifiable thing. My problem with the article as a whole is that the author seems to think his expertise in art qualifies him to make judgements about the relative quality of cultural experiences, which is emphatically not true.
* And you notice how the “low cultural experiences” he mentions are both TV shows from HBO, known especially for its literate programming, both also set in or around NYC, the center of the universe? God. How pretentious can you get?
February 1st, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Prachee said:
Hey, I never said that the guy wasn’t a pompous ass. . .my point was less about your being a philistine and more about the fact that a true connoisseur easily comes across as passing judgment on those that dabble. Again, you routinely talk in absolutes about good authors and horribly bad authors, subtly judging those that enjoy the latter. Your scoffing is no less insulting.
The big difference is that you are implying it and not even really intending to while this guy is just coming right out and saying it–making him the aforementioned pompous ass.
By the way, can you recommend a good RSS reader? I’m annoyed that mine is not updating properly.
February 1st, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Richa said:
“Insulting”? Wow, that’s harsh. But I guess it comes with the territory; anyone who broadcasts a negative opinion of something is in danger of offending someone who likes that same thing. Which is why so many people go out of their way to avoid publicizing negative opinions. Do rest assured, however, that no offense is meant from my lofty pronouncements.
What RSS reader do you use now, and what problems are you having with it? On the PC, I’ve used both Pluck and NewzCrawler, but had issues with both.
February 1st, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Prachee said:
Nono. . not harsh. I was in fact coming to your defense. Even if it was your defense against something I accused you of. I was just saying that it’s easy to offend people even if you’re just voicing your negative opinion. . just as you said. Again, this is in sharp contrast to what this guy said in this article—the offense was clearly meant and it deserved your wrath.
I’m using Google’s reader (switched from something just called RSS Reader). It doesn’t seem to update properly though. Which one do you suggest even if they do each have their own problems?
February 1st, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Richa said:
Well, Pluck is no longer available, so that’s out of the question. NewzCrawler is rated by both c|net and about.com as the best Windows RSS reader, but when I used it, I found the interface a bit fussy and not the most user-friendly. It’s also shareware. About.com recommends Omea as the best free RSS reader for Windows, but I’ve never used it.
February 1st, 2007 at 4:51 pm
hands of aten said:
Um… Jed Perl is an art critic. Of course he’s going to sound pretentious to someone who doesn’t follow or care about the art world. In fact, I would say he is one of the least pretentious art critics around. The point of this article, though, was to take aim at the poseurs and hangers-on that you deride. All he’s saying (in a nutshell) is that art should have some sort of discernible meaning, and that if someone is going to be celebrated as a great artist (as Currin and Yuskavage are), they should be technically skilled in the styles in which they work. To me, those ideas are not exactly pretentious, and would be fairly banal if it weren’t for the fact that he is attacking some of the biggest trends in the art world.
February 17th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Richa said:
Respectfully, I do care about the art world, and I do follow it, though certainly not to the extent that Perl does. That’s partly why I got so exercised about this. As I admitted in an earlier comment, I don’t contest that he’s more qualified than I to judge the technical merit of a piece of art, and in the main, if all he was saying was that artists should have a basic level of technical skill, I would agree with him.
But that wasn’t all he was saying. He started making claims about the relative merits of various cultural experiences, which he is not qualified to make. Or to say that the general, not-as-art-savvy-as-the-author public believes that the art world is some sort of aristrocracy. Which is the dictionary definition of pretension. And on top of that, most of the art he was discussing, outside of Currin’s and Yuskavage’s, was discussed in subjective, not objective terms, with terms like “emotional terrain” bandied about. That’s pretty pretentious. And whether or not he’s one of the least pretentious art critics around doesn’t mean he isn’t pretentious in the first place. It would seem clear from the superior tone of this article that he is.
February 17th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
the emotional pumpkin » Happy birthday! said:
[...] blog turns 4 today. In that time, I’ve ranted, raved, lost my baggage, and wasted my time and yours. On the whole, I’ve had a blast doing [...]
August 31st, 2008 at 10:14 am