Customer Reviews

Exhibitionism: Art in an Era of Intolerance

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

 

 

Munson's observations about the politicization of high culture are intelligent and original -- and right on the money. She argues not against the particular biases of museum curators or art history departments, but against the common, vulgar didacticism that so often accompanies the presentation of art. She demonstrates how aestheticism and trained objectivity have been mugged by interest-group politics. She gives voice to ideas that are often thought but rarely so well expressed. I recommend this book to anyone who cares about art and high culture, and I commend its author for her insight and thoughtfulness on the subject.

Think of the last time you were in a museum, gallery, or art history class... If it was before 1980, Miss Munson's book is a quick read that may shock you in a way that the Sensation show didn't. If you're a regular her investigations can't be denied. Liberals, conservatives, artists and non-artists alike will find these stories captivating and sad. As a painter living in New York, I can assure Munson that hope is not dead in the artist's studio even if the art world or public is too cynical to use their eyes.

...by the threatened reaction from those that have little to gain and all to lose by steering artistic focus toward definitions of beauty, quality and meaning executed by passionate artists, and away from the use of art exhibitions as purely political and social tools of the left, or simply because it's a fashionable career path in many of today's institutions.

If you're tired of art being defined by publicity stunts and attacks on your intelligence or values by naked emperors and empires, you ought to read this, because you are not alone. There are many of us who feel this way.

It took courage to write this book and I applaud her for it.

This is a brave, well-informed, smart book which takes on the art and art history establishment with devastating results. A major cultural critic, Munson demonstrates how conformist and narrow the art establishment has become. Her chapters on the NEA, Harvard, and the contemporary art scene are compelling, harrowing, and amusing, all at the same time. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the state of today's art and how it got to be that way. Those with vested interests in the status quo are already starting to squeak!

When the blasphemous manure-based exhibit, Sensation, opened at a prestigious Brooklyn Museum, indignant panjandrums were aggrieved that anybody would express outrage at this daring creation--or at least convincingly put forth that silly argument with a straight face. That oft-bellowed screed gave proof to the old adage that a lie told emphatically enough becomes truth. Obviously, excrement has no place in any valid work of art. Defaming religious symbols that have inspired for centuries debases aesthetic values. It is merely the controversy on which these modern day insurrectionists feed. Their concern for art takes a distant back seat to their lust for fame and money.

Lynn Munson efficiently documents the rampant hypocrisy within the so-called artistic society today. While the loudmouthed rebels who now control most of the arts establishment perpetually invoke the shibboleth of artistic freedom, the author paints a picture of greedy complainers whose goal is glory far more than artistic merit. The National Endowment for the Arts' obsequious funding programs may have played some role in fostering this change in artisans goals because the drive for acclaim was not always the primary artistic motivator. In the late 1960's when Lyndon Johnson--unquestionably with good intentions--created the National Endowment for the Arts--most of those creative folks truly valued the beauty of their trade. As Ms. Munson says, "the kinds of artists who received early NEA grants didn't choose artmaking as a professional path...and even the best of them expected to work their lives without public acknowledgement." In an ironic aside, she explains how the NEA under Johnson advocated true art, but under the administration of the far more conservative Richard Nixon, avant-garde experimentalism became sacred and standard criteria acquired the status of passe.

Regarding those self-righteous voices who declaim against censorship whenever some crackpot with a perverted mind is not readily granted a government grant, Ms. Munson notes "successive NEA chairmen recited the mantras of censorship and artistic freedom even while maintaining a panel system that discriminated against artists outside the postmodern establishment." Mentioning how real artists are now hardly given tertiary consideration by the ideologically-charged NEA, she says "how thoroughly the National Endowment for the Arts had become by 1995 at excluding precisely the caliber of artist it had rewarded in 1967, and how dimly the agency had come to be viewed by everyone but its dependents."

In a further rejection of exquisite and graceful presentation, the author discusses how the modern museum has in many ways sought to eschew visual grandeur and make itself as prosaic as possible. She sites many examples of grandiose longstanding structures taking steps to shun their stimulating elegance and highlight mundane features.

As insulting as it is to know the NEA is wantonly flushing taxpayer money, its weird actions are not without humor. Ms. Munson introduces Bonnie Sherk who received an NEA grant in 1975 for a project that "involved shutting herself into a cement-floored studio with a few friends and numerous animals (a sow name Pigme, two ring-necked doves, a woolly monkey, etc.); together they would engage in 'building and maintaining nests.'" Readers will be left conjuring up an image of Pigme thinking "get me out here!"

A very hopeful sign concerns the change in Lynn Munson's status since the publication of eye-opening expose in 2002. She currently serves as the deputy director of National Endowment for the Humanities. So while the entire concept of federal subsidies to artsy enterprises remains dubious, if the bad policy must stay in place, it is far better to see taxpayer dollars doled out to support majestic sculptures and splendid grisailles than ordure originals.

Lynne Munson's characterization of the deep looniness of the art world comes across clear as a bell. Part of this is good, simple writing, part is her experience in the upper levels of federal grant-making, and part - maybe the most important part - is her consistent use of convincing anecdotal evidence. This is no abstruse, jargonized academic text. It is simple, straightforward and convincing. And if you can read it and not come away thinking the art business is terminally weird, well... get help!

The underlying premise of this book is that if the piece of art isn't a nice painting of horsies or kittens or that the piece is politically charged in the least, then it is not art and merits scorn. The book could have been called "The Thought Police." Thank you for setting guidelines for us as to what art is and isn't and what we should enjoy.

From the deconstructionist perspective which Munson tries so hard to villify in her book, it seems only fair to point out that her arguement itself--nay, the entire raison d'etre of her book--is politically charged and dogmatic. It is important and necessary to understand the cultural context in which not only makes the book seem relevant, but also why Munson herself feels compelled to add her voice into this debate with her brand of intellectual populism. If you read this book, I would recommend reading any other book that might offset it and provide a perspective on why the nature of art is being examined and deconstructed in the first place. Trying to take art out of a political sphere of analysis, as Munson does in this book, is in itself a very political act.

Does she have a degree in art history? Has she written any art criticism? No... clearly this woman is unqualified, and her efforts to marginalize the most experimental forms of artistic practice result not from any aesthetic criteria but from a clear knee-jerk reaction in goose-step line with the current Bush agenda. This is a heavily politicized book, one written not to explore in an intelligent fashion but merely to look good for the type of audience that watches Fox news.

A friend showed me this book. She didn't think it was very good, and neither do I. It's ironic that a book subtitled "Art in the Age of Intolerance" is itself so intolerant. It's also shallow, poorly written, and not terribly well-informed. Munson's only real talent appears to be for personal character assassination, which is applied selectively to the book's villains.

In short, this is a book for people who already know what they want to be told, and are either afraid or unwilling to learn anything that breaks the mold now set by the reactionary right.