Art Criticism - The State University of New York

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symbolism? If the arts only exist to formalize and make articulate our anarchic Dionysian frenzy in order to purify rationality and help keep the culture on a level keel, why do critics keep telling artists: "Now don't worry your pretty little heads about these terrible things," handing them tricky games with which to amuse themselves? How long before they are allowed to take up grown-ups' weapons? Does the eclectic feel that he can jump from one compatibility to another with complete mobility or nobility like a low-brow checker crowned king by his public? Some artists' work borrows from so many sources we crown him original because it's too much trouble to figure out the influences. The advantage of having a strong personal style in painting is largely negative in that it allows one to be heard above the roar of mediocrities and imitators. These egocentric peculiarities distort the messages from the realm of the ideal. But the lucky parasites who have found their sturdy, banal oak tree only want to survive the storm, don't expect others to attach themselves to their own thin identities. The great unifying manner that will put us all above such survival tactics has yet to arrive. Wagner, Debussy, Schoenberg had influence that seemed almost universal during their reigns, but each has been superceded. Yet each seemed exactly right for its epoch. To posterity an eclectic style may seem the most original since it survives to tell its tale and then bows out. Only when we have set our society in order will the artists feel secure to relinquish their own personalities to the overwhelming chorus of earth-praise. How can any artist continue to exist creatively unless he believes his work is first rate? To keep going, we mediocrities must convince ourselves that we are being discriminated against, that however neglected we now are "our time will come" or that our contribution to the great machine, though miniscule, is vital. Though some of us feel that in a reversal in revolution we would be on top, most of us benefit from Capitalism's corrupt largess and chaos. Fed up with all of the systems we once called faiths, we save in our Hellenistic torpor the tessarae from the never-to-be-repeated murals of unity; they give us only scattered insights, at least portable in our journey toward a new wonder. When one's sins of omission are seen by others as crimes of commission one had better examine one's habits. The coward cast as alcoholic exaggerated to impress his needed bullies what could be more generous or lifeenhancing than a little hyperbole? Paying for these lies, what virtuosos we became in the subleties of our poison, what energies we wasted mollifying hangovers, forgiving ourselves for unreconstructed blackouts. When one is in the world of strife one is not in the world of art and the anti-arts we once practiced there have only weakened our real vocations. Of what comfort is chaotic art in a chaotic time? 44 Art Criticism
I can imagine a future art of painting of such grandeur that we will . almost wish for a great tragic event to occur so that the art would celebrate it. Now painting has become the genre one turns to last, for relaxation after the more practical arts have been attended to. 1 A "made vet" joke of 1946 has the demobilized soldier of World War II answering his parents' plea "Son, what's the matter with you? Why don't you speak to us 'just once?" with "I'm afraid I'll ruck up." This could explain the hermetic muteness of the painting of that period, inscrutable cover-ups of unmentionable experiences and the permissive criti!:s' "Leave him aIone. Don't you see he dOesn't want to talk about it?" Thus encouraged, the rituaIization of circumlocUtion in a,painting which few would confuse with futurismo's paean to techno ,10gicaI vitality began to take over the American art world. 2 "For purposes of clarification, this ('Smith paints New York style') will be referred to as a '''Manner' ... th~ look in a picture that is distinctly the artist'~ own ... this meaning will be referred to as 'Style'." T. Hess, Art News, April,~, . 1957. ''By style I mean the formaI mode of expression-reaIism, super~re8Ii~!W:'~ abstraction. By manner I mean the individuaI handwriting, the workmanship or the individuaI artist." H. Read "The Philosophy of Modern Art" 1955 p. 92i,~' 3 Harold Rosenberg, New Yorker magazine, July 1974. . vol. 17, no. 1 45
Page 1: Volume 17; Number I ART C.RIT1C1SM
Page 4 and 5: Art Department State University of
Page 6 and 7: 4 Art Criticism
Page 8 and 9: Breaking the Picture Plane: Reflect
Page 10 and 11: whale saga (more recently Hesse or
Page 12 and 13: and many of whom were born in Europ
Page 14 and 15: printed a bullet track fired into a
Page 16 and 17: music that (like the Mona Lisa) has
Page 18 and 19: causing by neglect a bitterness amo
Page 20 and 21: preserved some of the exuberance th
Page 22 and 23: which inspiration was stabilized. 5
Page 24 and 25: pain in the eyes of the cripple giv
Page 26 and 27: Bruckner did in his music) was not
Page 28 and 29: mortify into hard edges and mushy c
Page 30 and 31: with the sleep of reason. In the Am
Page 32 and 33: cent. Its fluidity of happy acciden
Page 34 and 35: And yet I can imagine these atrocit
Page 36 and 37: erature the not very evocative work
Page 38 and 39: maiden" of Marxism (unless things g
Page 40 and 41: ic he realize that artists suddenly
Page 42 and 43: The little nonsense that wise men r
Page 44 and 45: desensitized by the imitated means
Page 48 and 49: The Femme Fatale as seen in the wor
Page 50 and 51: Huysmans parallels the life of De R
Page 52 and 53: ask for the unreasonable and receiv
Page 54 and 55: ennui or physical distress leads th
Page 56 and 57: ences cited herein, the femme fatal
Page 58 and 59: period."2 He traced the tradition b
Page 60 and 61: suggestion to the artist and the po
Page 62 and 63: of Moreau's works is vague and myst
Page 64 and 65: ing her as the femme fatale, or sub
Page 66 and 67: The subtitle Satanic Decameron evok
Page 68 and 69: completely mythical. Coupled with a
Page 70 and 71: Moreau was very much a man of his t
Page 72 and 73: themes and images are often decaden
Page 74 and 75: p. 7-8; cited in Pierre Louis Mathi
Page 76 and 77: Between World War I and World War I
Page 78 and 79: shown distrust in the new styles. T
Page 80 and 81: These passages were meant to help g
Page 82 and 83: man public was voicing disapproval
Page 84 and 85: y old masters that were more suitab
Page 86 and 87: Notes 1 Alfred Barr, "Art in the Th
Page 88 and 89: From Diagnoses to Decadence: A Brie
Page 90 and 91: ate effort to reproduce fully an im
Page 92 and 93: patients. Charcot was often to be f
Page 94 and 95: Breuer attributed the presence of A
Page 96 and 97:
still is traditionally associated w
Page 98 and 99:
is not always recognized as such. H
Page 100 and 101:
generation on which the multitude o
Page 102 and 103:
2 Elaine Showalter, The Female Mala
Page 104 and 105:
36 Freud and Breuer, 37. 37 Su'ch a
Page 106 and 107:
Recasting the Art History Survey: E
Page 108 and 109:
mode of self-consciousness that bes
Page 110 and 111:
student-as-Other "calls" us to teac
Page 112 and 113:
thesis of such descriptions into an
Page 114 and 115:
In this final section of the essay,
Page 116 and 117:
image-world, the picture opens up a
Page 118 and 119:
history must itself be rethought in
Page 120 and 121:
15 Two of the most prominent propon
Page 122 and 123:
power: from the premodern exercise
Page 124:
~fJed in the Unikd Smtc, .• 9 ~]~
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Art Criticism - The State University of New York

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