Art Criticism - The State University of New York

with the sleep of reason.
In the American art world all argument is ad hominem. Without the
biography, the personality, there is no easy access to the work of art-on.
which the signature must be visible to avoid embarrassment.
Learning in 1965 that Stravinski's favorite composer was now
Guillaume de Machaud instead of Gesualdo, I found this reinforced by the
enthusiasms of the New York cognoscenti, self-appointed but condoned elite
whose standards we must agree with in cases of extreme tastelessness or art
launched in bad faith to hoax us. The vanguard backs up the non-objective
blob, that stared at long enough becomes a recognizable something relating to
the world of modern art if not the observed, tangible world; they encourage the
artists who have no faith in Shakespeare's love at first sight.
To order the esoteric, to cleanse it of freakishness is what our experimental
art was born to do. Those who can no longer distinguish the refreshingly
eccentric from the peculiar, the necessarily cathartic from the. sick obsession,
are not those we can trust to teII us what art will live. Unless we absorb an
entirely different kind of knowledge from that which has helped us up to now
we will not survive the events of our future. Is our difficult new painting and
sculpture a precursor of this para-knowledge? Perhaps today's artist's seeming
lack of love is due to his preoccupation with this new tongue.
Our need for parable now rivals that of the ancient world hinted at in
the New Testament, their disgust with rationality. It seems natural now that we
celebrate culture heroes aside from their products. Picasso vindicates those
well-endowed malcontents who do not react to lyrical beauty in art, are sexually
stimulated by dark humor, angry boulversements, absurd theatre, hieratic
totems of dangerous cults. Because he was a collector himself he is a hero to
the middle class art collector; he made his life and working leisure into the kind
of game they enjoy in their vacations from buying and seIIing. Most artists,
attempting to disencumber themselves, merely admired his style of living and
loving.
The painter dedicated heart and soul to the modem spirit of change
did not need to flavor his non-objective product with palely-loitering images to
get the attention of the critic or collector; one merely had to wait patiently until
they turned to new novelties in their ennui, and it did not take long. But the
elite possessors gave power to their artists only on the condition that, like
political figures, they take care of their mutual best interests, one of which was
increasing values, though here the critics were more vital than the artists, since
anything is collectible, speculatable. With critics like this, who needed dealers-or
in some cases, vice-versa? The age of the universal artist who spoke to
different levels of intelligence is past; now the painter quickly briefs his priests
who transmit his narrow, difficult specialty to the laity. The church-like museum
or gallery was as important as the painting, with art criticism as back-
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Art Criticism