Customer Reviews

The Painted Word

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Can I start by saying that this book "saved my art life"? Let me explain. In 1977 I started art school as a not so impressionable 21 year-old with a few years as a US Navy sailor under my belt. But in the world of art, there's a lot of moulding and impressions being made by a very galvanized world. And although I was a few years older than most in my class... I was probably as ready as any to swallow the whole line and sinker that the "modern art world" floats out there.

Then I read this book - it was given to me by Jacob Lawrence, a great painter and a great teacher --- although I didn't get along with him too well at the time. I read it (almost by accident and against my will --- it was a get-a-way "love weekend" with my then-girlfriend - it went sour. And this book OPENED my EYES!!! It was as if all of a sudden a "fog" had been listed about all the manure and fog that covers the whole art world.

I used it as a weapon.

I used it to defend how I wanted to paint and feel and write. And it allowed me to survive art school.

And then in 1991 - as I prepared to look around to start my own gallery - I found it again, in a gallery (of all places) in Alexandria, VA. I read it again, and to my surprise Wolfe was as topical and effervescent and eye-opening as ever!

Wolfe has a lot of bones to pick with the art world -- 25 years ago!!! He destroys the proliferation of art theory, and puts "art gods" like Harold Rosenberg, Clement Greenberg, and Leo Steinberg (who have ruined art criticism for all ages - by making critics think that they "lead" the arts rather than "follow the artists") into their proper place and perspective. He has a lot of fun, especially with Greenberg and the Washington Color School and their common stupidity about the flatness of the picture plane.

Here's my recommendation: If you are a young art student or a practicing artist: SAVE YOUR LIFE! Read this book!

That would require some element of fiction. This is simply a straight telling (well, almost straight) of the taste-makers and -breakers in the New York art scene of the 1950s to mid-70s. It's already so ludicrous, so filled with poker-faced parodies of sane discussion, that fiction wouldn't be nearly as strange. It's the complete domination of analysis over analyte.

This short book (100 pages, including some amusing cartoons) lampoons the whole theory of art theory as it arose in the salons and saloons of that era. It briefly traces the never-ending search for the new, a Red Queen's race since whatever we have today isn't new enough. In a bizarrely involuted turn, he even describes the rise and fall of different tastes in taste-makers.

If you've ever groaned at the solemn silliness of the intellectoid analyses or nihilist (lazy?) "Conceptual" artists, you'll laugh out loud at Wolfe's descriptions. He runs through the artsy buzz-wording like a buzz-saw.

//wiredweird

I read both this book and Linda Weintraub's "Art on the Edge" at the same time. I liked both very much and highly recommend both of them to get a full picture of the modern art world.

Weintraub clearly explains the concepts and theories behind the avante garde art of the 70s-90s, including Jeff Koons, Serrano's (in)famous Piss Christ, etc. Tom Wolfe cries that art theory has taken over art (which necessitates people like Weintraub to explain what's going on), that art is controlled by a clique, that some artists just want to shock the masses and to please the clique, and that the masses need not apply. I think these are very valid points, after all, Vanessa Beecroft posed 20 nude or bikini-clad babes in the Guggenheim and Heilman-C showed actual people having sex (See the 1998 review article in the ArtNet website).

But Tom does not discuss the larger issues: "Is this art? What is art?" That, combined with the fact that Wolfe wrote the book more as an opinion piece rather than the more journalistic approach he took in Electric Kool-Aid, forced me to take a star off.

It should be noted that Tom criticizes the art world's need for something new, where he was the "new" thing in the journalistic world in the 50s and 60s, in the nonfiction world in the 60s and 70s, and in the fiction world in the 80s and 90s. It's like the pot calling the kettle black.

It should also be noted that Tom was part of the art world himself, as he has exhibited his caricatures in NYC galleries. Caricatures, of course, are downplayed in the fine arts world. Keep this possible bias in mind as you read this book.

Nonetheless, the Painted Word is a fun, quick read that should make even the most-hardened boho artist think.

I've always had a fascination with highly creative people, enjoyed jazz that was ahead of its time, the things that broke the earlier bounds. But I never could understand fashionable contemporary art. Wolfe has explained to why this is so. It turns out that I'm not supposed to understand it; it's intended for an exclusive audience, and my lack of understanding is what validates it to the people for whom it is intended. Suddenly, it all makes perfect sense to me, and as I think about acquaintances who do immerse themselves in the contemporary art scene, my observations correlate directly with Wolfe's.

Where the book falls short is that it fails to recognize that this remains art. It might be odiously exclusive, but it's still a communication between the artist and the intended audience. In fact, Wolfe has probably helped me understand this communication better than I ever did.

A good thought-provoking read; I take some glee in the fact that art world snobs thought he was skewering them (and perhaps Wolfe thought he was, too), but really, he's just explaining the mechanisms at work. And of course, it has some classic Wolfe lines, especially a laugh-out-loud description of young female admirers doing "Culture pouts through their Little Egypt eyes." Worth it for that line alone.

Well, here we go - time to criticize a culture critic. Try saying that three times fast.

Anyone who knows anything about Tom Wolfe will know exactly what to expect from this 1975 exploration of the 1950-1970 Art World. Considering that he's always on the lookout for something funny to say, he does quite a good job, probably because the Art World is apparently a pretty funny place. Then again, that's always true of any insular group that develops its own vocabulary and learns to take itself too seriously.

According to Wolfe, that judgment applies equally to the artists, their critics, and the small world of collectors that support them both. He uses as an example the following cycle: Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning paint a few pictures using mere blobs of paint. At about the same time, Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg conclude in their columns that painting must naturally go in the direction of increased "flatness" to fulfill its destiny (and they do, in fact, write in such semi-apocalyptic terms). To illustrate their point, Greenberg and Rosenberg talk up Pollack and de Kooning. Art patrons in Milan, Rome, Paris and New York read the columns and get interested in Pollack and de Kooning. Thus encouraged, these artists paint even flatter paintings, Greenberg and Rosenberg chat them up even more in their columns, the Art World gets more excited, and round and round we go until a guy named Leo Steinberg smashes into the cycle. He declares that they've got it all wrong, the true "flatness" exists in the Pop Art of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and the whole thing starts all over again. Only with even more feverish declarations of theoretical orthodoxy this time.

Eventually, of course, the theory becomes far more important in the Art World than the paintings. This gives rise to Op Art, Happenings, Conceptual Art, and the world we live in today wherein the answer to the question "What is Art?" is "That which we find in Art Museums."

Wolfe splashes all this high comedy around in a truly scrumptious style, full of exclamation points. Behind the rhetoric, I suspect, is a man who thinks very highly of himself, but what else can we expect from a culture critic? Fortunately, what with all those exclamation points, it's fairly clear that Wolfe doesn't really take himself all that seriously, so his work is much easier to enjoy than it otherwise would be.

Even more interesting than the language, however, is the odd feeling one gets from The Painted Word that Wolfe doesn't think of the mid-century Art Follies as necessarily a bad thing, or even bad art. And indeed, who says that Art Theory is anything other than Art itself? Why criticize this development? Why not just enjoy it?

So in his last few pages, Wolfe predicts a retrospective in the year 2000. Instead of the paintings, this retrospective presents the true Art of the 1950's-1970's - the columns of Greenberg, Rosenberg, Steinberg, and whatever other Bergs in enormous reproduction, with tiny illustrations of the paintings in question next to them. As I write this, such an exhibit is nowhere yet to be seen, but that may only mean that Wolfe is smarter than the average museum curator (a supposition I can neither confirm nor deny). Be that as it may, Wolfe's craft is undeniable - sarcastic, informed, bitchy, and overwhelmingly funny. If the Word is Art, then the hyper-serious Greenberg, Rosenberg and Steinberg are mere wannabes. Wolfe, like Groucho Marx, is an Artist.

Benshlomo says, in the words of William Shakespeare, better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

The Painted Word is part of a pleasant little triptych of social commentary produced by Tom Wolfe in the 70s (more or less) of which Radical Chic and From Bauhaus to Our House make up the other titles. Even with lots of pictures, whitespace and margin, Painted Word only runs to 99 pages. I bought all three and read them over the course of a weekend, what with travel time and all.

Tom Wolfe very devastatingly takes a prominent Modern Art critic's unwittingly accurate sentence and elaborates it into a social, cultural and intellectual critique of the prentensions and foibles of this tiny self-referntial world.

This is a send-up, a satire, and a de-bunking. And a field for which such a come-uppance, if not long overdue, was at the least fully due for just this particular sort of biting insightful up-comeance.

Wolfe takes us through the motives and psychological drama of the three actors in this story - the Artist, the Patron, and the Critic.

The Artist has undergone a change as his role evolved from the glorification of the royals in the Old World to the affliction of the middle class in the New:

"The modern picture of The Artist began to form: the poor but free spirit, plebian but aspiring only to be classless, to cut himself forever free from the bonds of the greedy and hypocritical bourgeoisie, to be whatever the fat burghers feared most, to cross the line wherever they drew it, to look at the world in a way they couldn't see, to be high, live low, stay young forever - in short, to be the bohemian."

It is ultimately up to Warhol, of course, to perfect this stance Warholicly:

"Warhol learned fast, however, and he soon knew how to take whatever he wanted. The bohemian, by definition, was one who did things the bourgeois didn't dare do. True enough, said Warhol, and he added an inspired refinement: nothing is more bourgeois than to be afraid to look bourgeois. True to his theory, he now goes about in button-down shirts, striped ties, and ill-cut tweed jackets, like a 1952 Holy Cross pre-med student."

In the meantime, the idle, inherited rich have to cleanse their money:

"That is why collecting contemporary art, the leading edge, the latest thing, warm and wet from the Loft, appeals specifically to those who feel most uneasy about their own commercial wealth."

Yet they nonetheless, being humans and not theory processing machines, do find themselves drawn to things they can actually understand:

"We may it as a principle at this point that collectors of contemporary art do not want to buy highly abstract art unless it's the only game in town. They will always prefer realistic art instead - as long as someone in authority assures them that it is (a) new, and (b) not realistic"

This is Wolfe, not at his finest, for there is a certain sort of botanist's plodding categorization of the ecosystem at work here, but nonetheless at his sparkling-intermittent-burst best. The art `warm and wet from the Loft' is a delicious turn of phrase in so many ways and will be my favorite keepsake from this work.

As for the Critic, that is Wolfe's primary topic in this piece, and, being a short piece, I won't ruin or summarize it for you. He does end with a bold prediction for the Year 2000, so you do have something to look forward to.

This book is a good buy for Tom Wolfe lovers, modern art skeptics and free-thinkers, and the social and cultural commentariat. It's a bit less broad in its appeal than Wolfe's other works, including Radical Chic, so peruse the "Look Inside" pages first to make sure you like the style.

Tom Wolfe is the master of cunning expose. With history and humor he describes the New York City Art scene in the 1960s.

The politics and posturing of art figures trying to "legitimize" their art philosophy was ripe with hilarity. Art itself was secondary to the press agent. Guru's would write art credos and then hunt down bohemians to fit the bill. Guru's would fight among themselves the real definition of Art. The more outlandish, the more embraced.

The art that stirs emotion, brings pleasure, or tells a universal truth will stand the test of time.

I've seen the Jackson Pollack documentary and understand that it took a certain skill to produce his many works, but do you want #27 hanging on your wall in the den?

Wolfe was surprised reading the New York Times to learn from Hilton Kramer in 1974 that realism lacked a persuasive theory. He had been looking at pictures and professed to not understand why a theory is needed. Indeed, how could modern art be literary? Literary is a code word for retrograde. The opposite is a sort of arts for arts sake mode. Artists helped to make theory--consider the cases of Georges Braque and Frank Stella.

Most modern movements began before World War I. By 1900 the success game of the art world was set. Art supplies are available everywhere, but artists move to New York. The artist has to keep his edge and focus on new developments. An art mating ritual takes place between artists and theorists and collectors. Collectors enjoy being considered separated from bourgeois society.

Modern art enjoyed a boom in Europe in the twenties. By the thirties it was so chic the Dole Pineapple Company sent Georgia O'Keefe to Hawaii. Theory did not come into its own until after World War II. The theories were beautiful even if the Abstract Expressionist paintings are no longer hanging in the museums and in people's houses on Long Island.

After World War II New York replaced Paris as an art center. Hans Hofmann was in Greenwich Village with Ad Reinhardt, Joef Albers, Lee Krasner. There were other circles--cenacles. They met at the Club on Eighth Street and at the Cedar Tavern. The great theorists were Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. Hans Hofmann emphasized purity and there was a lot of concern for flatness. Rosenberg described the canvas as an arena.

Alfred Barr and James Sweeney Johnson had a huge function in art promotion, selecting artists and works. Morris Louis used unprimed canvas. Jackson Pollock was an artist stuck in the dance. He had another problem in that his reputation was huge but his work did not sell. Earlier modern art had been only partly abstract. Robert Scull once said that Abstract Expressionism was a little club on Tenth Street.

Art that is new and not too abstract and not realistic would necessarily be a hit--hence Pop Art. Leo Steinberg and William Rubin were theorists of Pop Art, finding merit in the works of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Jasper Johns's flags were wonderfully flat. Greenberg and Rosenberg denounced Pop Art.

Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein created famous images. They used commonplace sign systems of American culture. Pop Art rejuvenated the art scene. Op Art like Pop Art was enjoyed for literary reasons. (Wolfe's title for his collection is derived from this observation.) Theory started to move toward reductionism. Conceptual Art was of two kinds. Photo Realism appears in the chapter 'Epilogue'.

Wow! This is a good book. There are illustrations.

A classmate lent me The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe, published in 1975, and boy, if you ever want some actually intelligent criticism and questioning of the establishment of modern art, this is it!

The beauty of this book is that Wolfe doesn't usually attack the art - though occasionally he does accuse artists of allowing themselves to be too influenced by popular theory - he really attacks the establishment.

And he does so in a hilarious way. For instance, Wolfe starts out explaining the "mating ritual" between the bohemian artists, "boho", and high society that can financially back and establish the artist, the "monde". He talks about how to be successful, an artist must first be an honest boho, live amongst the other bohemians and adopt true anti-bourgeois values. This is called the "boho dance". But once an artist has attracted the monde with his dance, he must "doubletrack", which means learn to gleefully hobnob with the elite and enjoy his success, despite being a hypocrite.

And this mating metaphor is just the beginning. This book oozes sarcasm of the best and most vicious sort. Just check out this passage, about how pop art, according to the theorists, was supposed to be about "flatness", rather than how the subject matter related to real life:

"In short... the culturati were secretly enjoying the realism! -plain old bourgeois mass-culture high-school goober-squeezing whitehead-hunting can-I-pop-it-for-you-Billy realism! They looked at a Roy Lichtenstein blowup of a love-comic panel showing a young blond couple with their lips parted in the moment before a profound, tongue-probing, post-teen, American soul kiss, plus the legend `We rose up slowly...as if we didn't belong to the outside world any longer...like swimmers in a shadowy dream...who didn't need to breath...' and--the hell with the sign systems--they just loved the dopey campy picture of these two vapid blond sex buds having their love-comic romance bigger than life, six feet by eight feet, in fact, up on the walls in an art gallery."

How can you not love writing like that?

This book rocks.

If you were to stop a random person on the street and ask him what his favorite painting was, chances are it wouldn't be anything newer than Picasso. These days, art seems historically detached from what it once was, led by the esoteric mumblings of `in-the-know' art professionals. Enter Tom Wolfe, who in this installment levels his satiric pen at the world of modern American art.

Wolfe really helps explain what the actual intention of modern art is these days. Whereas in the past art was meant to please God, or to portray great moments in history, or to push the boundaries of perception, the goal of today's art is to be the perpetual rebel, the anti-bourgeois. Also targets of this satiric salvo are leading art personalities like Harold Rosenberg and Leo Steinberg. It's a short and enjoyable read.

For me, perhaps the most damning indictment of modern art came not from this book (although the themes were echoed), but from a recent episode of 20/20 (March 11, 2005). In it the reporters show off a series of abstract-looking paintings to several upper-East Side art critics. Unbeknownst to them, these works were the finger painting products of four year-old children. The critics largely praise the works, but my how they scramble when they learn of the `artists' behind these creations. Add to that the quote one of them says - that `The purpose of art is to make rich people feel important' - leaves me feeling that modern art is but a soulless, hypocritical, contrarian fraud.