Art Criticism - The State University of New York

Why should I be at the mercy of some self-loathing screenwriter's
hangover? Is film as masscult immune to folk remedies? Deep down we know
that psychopaths are not as sick as us neurotics; we have the sub-art of our
society to prove it. This accounts for the pallid ambivalences of our high art,
the bloodless realm of the neurotic liberal who can't afford mentally the pure
raw madness of the masses (though he pays them tribute by using their slang).
The future art that will heal this gap will be at once less topical and ephemeral
in subject as well as go profoundly to the depths of a so far uninvestigated folk
mass unconscious,
To preach that hope is an instrument of the devil, a treacherous signal
leading us to further despair, is an unforgivable cynicism alien to the spirit of
art that diminishes our small fund of courage in a cold universe. Since art is the
very embodiment of hope for all who take the pains to absorb it, the seeming
pessimism of the dedicated artist exists only to frighten people into improving
their society and is not an end in itself. One of the privileges of someone like F.
Goya is to hold the mirror of earthly folly to his already entertained and captured
audience. Perhaps our current schlock or funk art is a brief searing blast
of moral outrage intended to shame us into sterner delights than sloth. Our
innocuous art muckrakers don't get the point of this art, being so inept in
vituperation that they unconsciously solicit plugola from those they make
notorious.
The painter or sculptor doesn't mind playing second fiddle to writers,
critics, priests, etc. if he is secure in a common shared faith. But when the
writers begin to over-celebrate his product as something with magic powers
above other metiers, when he knows that it is only a small but necessary part of
the total culture, he realizes that the basic fabric of that culture has been tom,
and that soon any charlatan's-claims of godliness will be taken seriously.
A large percentage of any American abstract expressionist painting
was pure air (but cleansing) from the sea, aiming to rinse out the old, and this
made their creators think they could use the help of the articulate wordsmiths.
A movement that wanted to give up all literary metaphor in favor of an unexplainable
"thereness" thereby allied itself with a literature of pure paint only
superficially non-literary. Allusions crept in-the East Hampton landscape,
non-objective portraiture where many other readings were possible, enriching
with a freshly-minted myth a threadbare, but precious austerity in 'which a
seasoned lover of painting, being candid, found only' one meaning: a simplification
of the ferment of nature. To find a serviceable raison d' etre in the words
of these 'newly-inaugurated art apologists was like going to the Romantic
English poets for a logically reasoned credo of' political activism.'
Artists called in to give their benediction to the taste of people of
"action" can't be blamed for publishing (in revenge) hubristic manifestos, as
Still and Rothko did. These had some good effect, at least made the nouveau
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