Customer Reviews

Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity (Cybereditions Critics Series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Funny and irreverent, Kimball captures prosaically what so many of us artists and art lovers often feel. The nexus between art critics, gallery owners, and celebrity has always been insidious. Kimball shows no mercy when jabbing at politically correct shibboleths in the established art economy.

Contrary to what another reviewer (I must wonder whether he actually read the book) has posted here twice, Kimball does indeed offer us guidance in how to "approach art" with one very important message: The art itself and by itself is always more important than the critic. What he does not do is genuflect before the altar of over-intellectualization and deconstruction that enthralls so many art poseurs.

Highly recommended.

In an artworld where cynicism and duplicity are the norm, Kimball offers an important commentary of the lack of values that inform much of the art and art criticism today. For most critics, art need only be "challenging" to be good. Kimball clearly states the importance of craft, skill and intellectual rigour as disciplines which artists need to cultivate. Kimball's stylish prose and precise vocabulary make this a highly enjoyable read.

Kimball is a breath of fresh air in the world of art criticism. Also, the New Criterion, the magazine his writes for, is terrific.

This book has a number of genuine virtues, many of them noted by other reviewers here. But these virtues mostly concern the sympathy that readers have for the conclusions that Kimball reaches and expresses--in favor of standards, against nihilism, and the like. But what Kimball says in the book about Clement Greenberg might with equal justice be said about the book itself: "He favored the brief review...and he tended to purge his writing of argument, leaving only judgments, the conclusions" (p. 98). Like Greenberg, Kimball has little patience or aptitude for argument. The average essay in this book is a review of a few pages' length, occasionally insightful, but full of unsupported assertions and argumentative fallacies. When Kimball confronts a view he doesn't like, his first resort is to laugh at it. His second resort is to appeal to one of his favorite authorities and throw an impressive quotation at it (from e.g., Julius Meier-Graefe, Roger Fry, Clement Greenberg, Aristotle, Kant). The first strategy seems to suggest that Kimball is just too sophisticated to take his interlocutors seriously. The second one suggests that Kimball has read what his interlocutors haven't. In fact, what both strategies actually reveal is a fundamental incapacity to think for oneself and write accordingly.

His discussion of Ayn Rand in the fourth chapter is simply incompetent: every attempt at rebuttal in it commits some textbook fallacy (e.g., begging the question). The strange thing is that while Kimball insists--in 2001, against Rand--that art cannot be defined, he repeatedly contradicts that very claim throughout the book. Reading the book backwards: in 1997, he wonders whether the work of Gilbert and George is genuine art (p. 239), in the same year he wonders whether Rauschenberg's work really qualifies as art (p. 232); in 1998, he laments the fact that "anything can count as art today" (p. 228); in 1995, he wonders whether Warhol's Brillo pads are really art (p. 217); and then we return to 2001 and find the author stymied by the question of whether something he confronts in the Whitney is really art (p. 210). So which is it--do we need a definition or can we dispense with one? The answer seems to be: we can dispense with the task of definition if we're writing polemics against Ayn Rand; otherwise, we badly need one. Kimball cites a passage from Aristotle's ethics against Rand--misunderstanding the passage, misquoting it, and misspelling the work from which it comes (p. 52). A suggestion: if you want to cite Aristotle, why not start with Aristotle's Metaphysics IV.3? That's where he enunciates the law of noncontradiction.

As I said at the outset, the book has its virtues. But the virtues that have been touted here ought to be seen in the context of some considerable flaws--and the preceding is not an exhaustive summary.

There are enough good points about this book to make it a worthy purchase. As a painter struggling to work within a traditional academic style of painting, I welcome most all of the well-deserved bullets fired at the modern "art" establishment, such as the excellent work being done by the Art Renewal Center. That being said, this book indeed has its problematic aspects. From reading the reviews and the blurb for this book one would think that the author would be a latter-day champion of traditional western art and its values - at times he does indeed seem to be so inclined. However, when one reads through the progressive essays and notices that the author takes denigrating shots at the likes of latter-day masters such as Burne-Jones, Moreau, and Leighton, while singing praises for Matisse and the modern art critic Clement Greenberg, one begins to wonder if there is a self-denying modernist masquerading behind a traditionalist veneer. At least he does get the evaluation of Odd Nerdrum correct. Worth a look, but traditional artists and enthusiasts looking for a kindred spirit should be on the lookout for some of the rather odd and contradictory opinions presented here.