Customer Reviews

The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art

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This is a brilliant and scathing look at how our post-modernist art historians are engaged in the de-civilization of Western art. Kimball skewers the current trend of viewing all Western art (as well as Western literature) solely through the prism of sex, gender, and class. What results is a ludicrous but scary disfigurement of Western art.

Kimball takes seven well known paintings by seven different artists, and shows us the absurdity of those art elites in the academic world who are blinded by their politically correct madness. The chapter on John Singer Sargent's 1882 painting, "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit" gave me belly laughs galore as leading Sargent expert Professor David M. Lubin of Wake University, subjects a painting of four upper crust little girls at the turn of the century into a critique of sexual oppression and perversion. Playing on the French version of Mr. Boit's name ( i.e. boite, meaning box) Professor Lubin contends 'the Female Child is enclosed within [an]ideological and biological box'. If this is not absurd enough, Kimball shows us how Lubin's reasoning in analyzing the painting in sexual/gender terms depends upon such things as the circumflexed 'i' in 'boite' (remember the Frenchified version of the girls' father's name) as a receptacle into which the 'i' phallus plunges. In addition the word 'boite' the good Professor tells us also means 'house of prostitution'. From this he concludes that the little girls represent the father's (remember Dad doesn't appear in Sargent's picture) harem.

One could laugh one's head off if it wasn't so frightening to consider this is what young people are subjected to in universities across America. 'Bravo' to Roger Kimball for showing us the 'Theater of the Absurd' that goes on behind those ivy covered walls. My daughter is an art major. I'll be sure to remember Mr. Kimball's book next time her university telephones asking for a charitable donation.

Voltaire wrote, "I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it." No doubt, the Lord has already made the "tenured radicals" of postmodern academia ridiculous, but it takes a master of ridicule, like Voltaire or Roger Kimball, to make their ridiculousness evident to the rest of us. And this Kimball does with rare wit, humor, charm, and those great enemies of the ridiculous: reason, logic, and common sense. In this book Kimball takes several masterpieces by artists as diverse as Rothko and Rubens, and then cites the critiques of these works by highly respected authorities within the postmodern academy. We then see how these postmodern "experts" totally ignore the picture itself, the historical context, the intent of the artist, and anything related to common sense observation, while launching into theoretical nonsense that does nothing more than display their own "politically correct" ideologies, psychological preferences, prejudices, and solipsistic obsessions. Thus, we see that these academic "rapists" reveal much about themselves, but nothing about the artist, or the work of art itself, which is reduced to nothing more than a backdrop to better display the "art historian's" ego, and to score points with his or her like-minded academic peers.

This book is brilliant, captivating, and delightful to read, and includes a nice color plate of each masterpiece referenced. It is a page turner, with a laugh, or at least a wry smile of recognition, on each and every page. I highly recommend it.

My main reason for writing is to add my voice to the chorus of praise - and to challenge its politically correct critics. It worries me that readers might see the negative reviews and avoid this work. It's an important book, for good arts criticism is increasingly hard to find in universities, and here's why. Kimball does an excellent job of showing up what shoddy scholarship gets written in the academy nowadays. You can free associate with Lacan and Derrida - to paraphrase Camille Paglia - and get away with sheer nonsense. And as Paglia also said, they're destroying people's appreciation of beauty in the process.

It's really stunning that the writers Kimball picks on are taken seriously; but jargon and cant are the order of the day in the modern university. If you're obscure, you can get away with such nonsense. Well, not with clear and cutting thinkers like Kimball on the case. Kimball believes in art, beauty, and logical argument, and his work is searing and convincing. And as several others have pointed out, it's also incredibly funny. You have to read this book just to see what people are getting away with.

During my years in art history graduate school (Columbia and Penn) I was constantly baffled by theory crazed professors and peers who were wildly enthusiastic about what I regarded as inpenetrable, ill-written, politically charged interpretations of art history. As an Americanist I was forced to read Lubin and Fried and could make no sense of their often bizarre pronouncements. I seriously began to wonder if I was simply not intellectually equipped to pursue the subject because these authors were lionized by everyone yet they were utterly incomprehensible to me.

Roger Kimball takes these authors (one can hardly call them scholars) to task by citing some of their oddest statements about well known painters and their masterpieces. All of this is prefaced by his own sane, common sense historical approach to these same works of art. So I love the book, but not without certain reservations.

The book (dare I say "text") is more appropriate for the average educated person than the professional art historian. Kimball relies heavily on satire and ridicule because, as he states openly in his introduction, the ideas he criticizes are so outlandish that they ought not be honored with a serious, point by point refutation. This approach at times becomes empty and heavyhanded, and one gets the impression that the author is merely showing us how clever he is with words, which he very certainly is.

Kimball, weened on Clement Greenberg and Hilton Kramer style formalism (both critics that he quotes approvingly), tends to look at complex paintings with a "what you see is what you get" stance. I am all for formalism, but it is impossible [for me] to look at Winslow Homer's Gulf Stream and rule out the possibility that the artist is making a social commentary on the status and possible symbolic fate of the freed Negro in the late or post-Reconstruction era. Just because Homer was a strange, reclusive personality who did not like to explain his pictures does not mean that we should overlook the strong undercurrents of violence that run through his work and try to learn about him through his pictures. (I just argued with my artist wife about the violence in such a seemingly innocent picture such as Snap the Whip.)

Kimball is avowedly against politicizing works of art, yet much art is intensely political. Moreover, his own book is political in that it is a passionately articulated conservative response to the liberal mania for political correctness.

Ultimately I think that Kimball very deliberately picked his most vulnerable enemies, tore them to shreds, and wrote a conservative crowd pleaser that never really addressed the questions and limitations of interpretetation. He even took a minor shot at Panofsky. Those who espouse the purely formalist and "common sense" approach to art history are not getting the whole picture and deprive themselves of some of the qualities that make images such wonderful, mysterious, and thought provoking things. Kimball dismantled the academic Tower of Babel with all due sarcasm, but became so caught up in destruction that he didn't follow through with any truly profound and memorable conclusions.

That all said, Kimball has challenged some very prominent art historians on their own ground, and I am unaware that any of them have dared to venture forth from their ivory towers and offer a reasoned response. You will note that the negative reviewers above did nothing but spurt venom; could it be that Kimball caught them with their proverbial pants down and there is no defence for such subjective flights of fancy?

This book, which was an unexpected gift from a client, was a pleasant surprise! Roger Kimball is a conservative social and cultural critic as well as a man who is interested in the history of ideas and their consequences. His elegantly written essays have appeared in the pages of the New Criterion and other publications for decades. In this well crafted and conside book he attacks the infliction of new types of criticism on the practice of art history that has occurred over the past several decades. Today, a work of art is rarely seen as a painting or work of sculpture to be judged on its artistic merits and as part of its own time. Instead, it is seen through a prism - be it feminism, colonialism, racism, gay studies or a trendy French literary theory. All too many critics and art historians bring their agenda to the museum or gallery and the art is made to fit their ideology or political agenda.
Kimball has fun relating some of the most incredible interpretations of famous works of art and cites a critic's idea that Peter Paul Rubens' "Drunken Silenus" is actually an allegory to anal rape or that Courbet's large, grandiose hunting scenes - which anyone who has visited a major French museum can tell you have a long tradition in French and European painting - really relate a "a castration anxiety." Unfortunately, the author has many other examples of how radical politics and social theory have invaded art.
For the millions of Americans who, in the process of their matriculation, simply attended a survey course or two in art history, this book will be an eye opener. Because of the silly, jargon-filled reviews in the major newspapers, millions of Americans gave up reading about the arts years ago and they will now be able to see why the visual arts no longer resonate with so many viewers. For those of us who are involved in the arts and have had an intimate view of the destructiveness of the ideas that Kimball challenges, this book is a well-written expression of what we have long felt. Jeffrey Morseburg

I listened to this guy in an interview and decided to give him a read. He's obviously very smart. He does something very subtle in this book that I think is very interesting. You realize that not that many people read art criticism. It's basically a little band of academics who quote each other and give each other praise, but no one else listens. Except the student who's paying tens of thousands of dollars and doesn't want to ruin their grade point average by failing a stupid art history class. So they repeat back the drivel to get the grade.

That's not what he says in the book, that's what happens in classes. In the book, Roger makes you laugh at what these guys wrote. Not many people have actually seen this stuff, words on paper. It's funny (transcript at www.7to7.net).

Aside from many trips to the dictionary due to the fact Mr. Kimball has an enormous and delicious vocabulary, I found this book to be informative but mostly full of opportunites to chuckle. It's no surprise that given the trends in academia, the role of art critic has evolved into the practical, obedient soldier that serves a greater "social" purpose aligned with postmodernist philosophies that tend to politicize everything. However at some point, should we readily believe or not question these scholars, we could become unmoored from our sensory selves, our spirits, our inner mysteries that draw us to themes in an unplanned way. Then, we will listen to anything, we will like anything, or if we are told, we can be taught to like something. This undermines the aesthetic value of art. Moreover, if today's art critic is evaluating works via a constricted predictable prism, then my fear is that "artists" will produce to please the critics.

I have to say, as a female, I found the constant feminist and gender interpretations silly, especially with Sargent's "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit" and with Gauguin's "Spirit of the Dead Watching". Aside from the tremendous fatigue of reading the examples of group-speak, I felt that these critics were trying to kill the first-impression appeal of the works. It made me feel as if I were at a crime scene.

In essence, Mr. Kimball demonstrates that the superimposition of current petit theories on great works has permeated art departments in higher education, just as this narrow tendency to evaluate phenomena has permeated other departments. He closes with an apropos quote from Oscar Wilde, reminding us that overcomplication may serve the interests of the viewer and not the object: "Only a shallow person does not judge by appearances."

After reading a positive review of this book in the Wall Street Journal I went straight to Amazon and ordered it. Ultimately the book really is very entertaining (I especially liked what he did to Heidegger in chapter 7) and quite informative, but also a little cloying. For people who hate what art critisism has become (and I count myself among them) this book is their anthem but at a certain point I got tired of the smug self-satisfied tone of the author. Yes, I get it -- your clever. You have clever things to say. Goodie for you. But could we focus more on the issues and be a little less self-congradulatory in our one liners? In the end I recommend this book unreservedly for people who know about art and those who don't -- it's definitely worth reading, but maybe in the next book Kimball could take it down a notch.

Roger Kimball's wonderfully readable book skillfully and wittily exposes the patently ludicrous interpretations of prominent postmodernist art history academics. He makes it clear that these academics are concerned less with understanding and appreciating art than with propagating their own silly obsessions with the politics of sex, race and class. I was left wondering how the `scholars' that Kimball highlights are able to stay employed much less rise to prominence in their field.

Kimball's book should be required reading for all university students, but especially art history students. It would be an effective inoculation against the politically motivated mumbo-jumbo that passes for scholarship in most arts faculties these days.

I enjoyed reading this book. Mr Kimball certainly makes a valid case, and he is appropriately polemical, and scathing. The reason I am giving three stars is that the basic premise is so clear that it doesn't really merit a whole book. The academic nonsense that Kimball skewers is so bad that it is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, at least if you are sane enough to see garbage for what it is. Perhaps the book would feel more complete is Mr Kimball had elaborated more on his positive approach, the nice, but surprisingly refreshing idea, that we should be content to appreciate the aesthetic quality of great art without politicizing it. Finally, Mr Kimball has the irritating habit of using obscure words that make the text clunky at times, and are downright funny in a book that is critical of academic gobbledy-gook.