Art Criticism - The State University of New York

Did we think that by turning living objects into machinelike simplifications we
were getting at their essences? We didn't. Yet we had to do it to learn a deeper
lesson.
The art layman is perhaps as impressed by the art lover's ability to
decipher modern painting and sculpture as he is by a musician's transformation
of notes into sound. This is a befuddlement the dedicated artist never
considers, so inured is he to this undemocratic rigmarole. As long as the eyes
of the novice are riveted to the strange, intricate drama before him he can
remain convinced, but ifhis attention strays for a moment to the larger world he
is struck by the unnaturalness of the artifice. Absorbed in the game, we declare
that they who dislike modern art probably hate the good art of the old masters
as weII, that the essence of the message of modernity is so explosive and
volatile that it can be communicated only obliquely, by symbols learned with
difficulty. Here we are far from the crimes of passion that make the world twirl,
yet more neophytes are daily converted to significant form's religion than R.
Fry had ever expected. But there are some who must rely on intuitive revelation,
must have the fuII documented experience that alone can warn them of
uglinesses prettily camouflaged that a faulty theory might aIIow. Perhaps compassion
will turn out to be the ultimate frisson of the jaded as the legends and
superstitions of modern art's fashionable cerebrations trickle down to the
lumpen proletariat. The strong lonely weirdoes of art who are their own counsel
have always found new mythologies without meaning to. G. Santayana
remarked on the warm friendliness of the first evening star as compared with
the lonely, uncomprehensible awe we experience when the sky is fuII. One new
work of art could inspire a contemplative solitude rivaling quickly cooling
fireworks that only dismay with multiplicity.
10. WHY SHOULD PAINTING KNOW ITS PLACE INlHE, SCHEME OF
Clll..TURE?
Our present elite avant garde does not easily forgive its artists for
painting weII and soon learns to spot the work of a slick artist feigning fashionable
unpainterly crudeness. It is hard on painting that does not know its place,
that wants to move into the moral sphere of literature, "pop" art being an inept,
tentative foray they did not expect to be so popular, aIIowing it in when they
saw it had no teeth. Optical art was a sort of masochistic chastisement, a selfimposed
meager diet for sensuous excesses that seemed about to run wild, not
very effective toward a new sick brutality launched by exquisite playboys to
poison the art crooks. As always in American art surrealism stands behind the
scenery, over-rehearsed but never invited onstage.
There is perhaps no defense against organized dedicated villainy, but
deceit and diabolical cleverness has its charms for our liberal crusaders, soon
vol. ] 7, no. ] 4]