Art Criticism - The State University of New York

whose main purpose seems to be to exclude their unpopular schoolmates, they
were hard on the arriviste, enthusiastic curiosity here outweighed by length of
tenure. Since there were no longer any august judges to appeal top the commune
gave all a courage that led paradoxically to timid conservatism.
This is the tough-mindedness that P. Pavia spoke for when he said in
"It Is" that it was inexcusable for anyone in New York at that time not to know
what was going on, revealing the exasperation of the seasoned intellectual
pessimist at the wide-eyed parvenu. But there were imaginary as well as real
turds in this new garden, and avoiding them led to a cautiousy mumbling,
noncommittal stance instead of the initial intention of stretching arms and
taking new deep breaths. Here were second-wave pilgrims to whom the new
faith did not come so easily, who had to earn back a lost ingenuousness
painfully, working gingerly and without much panache with the muddy colors
from the slough of despond, not having earned the bright colors of the founding
fathers' emblems of vindication.
The day will come, believed Duchamp, when we will no longer say
"hete comme un peintre." But aside from the birdlike gaiety ofthe neo-dadaists,
aren't painters usually a stolid, inarticulate lot? Many have the squat short
endomorphic muscularity of Picasso, his phlegmatic peasant wit. And, in their
awkward muteness, they usually can say "my kingdom is not of this world."
Yet H. Hoffman did not have to tell us (as he did) that our creativity made us as
important as anyone else; we had the war's overturning of defunct materialist
values as a weapon for our new enfranchisement as official dreamers.
One shouldn't look for the correct time in a clock store. We see experts
scrutinizing with microscopes paintings it took the artist ten minutes to
finish with a wall brush. Or they puzzle over the suicides of certain Slavic
painters which probably occurred impulsi'vely (providing philosophical ramifications
that will, no doubt encourage their devotees). They are pondering a
movement that was only vital before it had any large influence. Vlaminck and
Derain painted better as Fauves than as independents, and for the Abstract
Expressionists this kind of symbiosis was also nourishing, the group acting as
superego against excesses that might cause it to lose own respect. But unsettling
insights caused some to drift away, many to oblivion in provincial art
worlds where "one man alone just ain't no Goddamn, good." As a person
attempting to live alone in the woods will write accounts of his escape from
corruption to fortify himself, members of this group would join hands with
each other by means of magazines, exhibits, distanced not only by heartbreaking
U.S.A. miles but by an urgent wish to go against the grain of the
"groups'" growing threat to the fulfillment of their own insistent personnae.
Contrary to legend, in only a few cases do the prices of dead artists'
w~rk rise. It no longer pays for an artist to die. The public that neglects its great
artists, trusting that posterity will vindicate them, is guilty in its materialism of
vol. 17, no. 1 15