The One with The Painted Word

312. Title & Author: The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe (106 pages)
Genre: Nonfiction—Art History & Theory
Completed: 28 December 2014

Summary & Review:
Author and social commentator Tom Wolfe turns his sharp eye--and sharper wit--on modern art, theory, and criticism. As he traces the evolution of art among the culturati during the Twentieth Century he shows the inconsistencies and hypocrisies within the insular art world. As artists and critics attempted to dispose of the millennia of artistic heritage before them they eventually came full circle and became the very thing they were trying to destroy.

This is only the second book I’ve read by Tom Wolfe, but I am already a huge fan (you can read my review of his modern masterpiece The Bonfire of the Vanities (#274) here). I especially enjoyed seeing Wolfe deploy his talents to examine Modern Art. I earned my bachelor’s degree in Art History and even wrote my senior thesis on Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, so I was thoroughly exposed to the art of the Twentieth Century and I completely agree with Wolfe’s observations. I can’t say I altogether blame the artists and critics for delving so deeply into the theory behind the art rather than the quality of the art. Where does one go after Michelangelo? Bernini? Caravaggio? Can a modern artist really top the artistic mastery of such geniuses? Probably not. So, instead they try “rejecting” all that and focusing on theory.

One quote I found particularly interesting explains the general public’s dislike of modern art. There was never a demand or market for it. Rather, the self-anointed masters of the art world presented it to the people and told them that this was "good" despite what they, the public, may think. Long quote: “The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in Modern Art, the notion that the public scorns, ignores, fails to comprehend, allows to wither, crushes the spirit of, or commits any other crime against Art or any individual artist is merely a romantic fiction, a bittersweet Trilby sentiment. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened. The public that buys books in hardcover and paperback by the millions, the public that buys records by the billions and fills stadiums for concerts, the public that spends $100 million on a single movie—this public affects taste, theory, and artistic outlook in literature, music, and drama, even though courtly elites hang on somewhat desperately in each field. The same has never been true in art. The public whose glorious numbers are recorded in the annual reports of the museums, all those students and bus tours and moms and dads and random intellectuals…are merely tourists, autograph seekers, gawkers, parade watchers, so far as the game of Success in Art is concerned. The public is presented with a fait accompli and the aforementioned printed announcement, usually in the form of a story or a spread of color pictures in the back pages of Time. An announcement, as I say. Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his worth and make it stick. They can only bring you the news, tell you which artists the beau hamlet, Cultureberg, has discovered and certified. They can only bring you the scores.” (p. 24-5)

That nails it on the head and explains the widespread scorn for Modern Art. People see a Rothko and think, “That is just a square painted on a canvas. Boring.” Or they see a de Kooning and think, “That’s ugly.” But, the residents of “Cultureberg,” as Wolfe calls it, those few thousand world wide clustered in New York and Paris and Milan and Berlin who tell everyone else what is art, they scoff and laugh at the little people and think, “Oh, they just don’t get it. They’re so dumb.”  Just compare Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel to Franz Kline’s Painting Number Two and ask yourself which is more worthy of acclaim and admiration. So, who’s the dumb one?

Rating: 9.0