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FRANK KERMODE
of this sort he will choose as the critical epoch in history the one
in
which he lives, call his generation tragic, and define the condition of the
uoyant
as estranged, isolated, alienated. It is in the nature of the case
that the world in which he lives will be thought of as decadent,
and
that this belief will seem compatible with a myth of renascence compar·
able to that attributed to Hofmann. These traditional ambiguities are
doubtless compounded by others-for example, the difficulty,
which
Rosenberg of course understands, of separating out the economic from
the artistic element in the act of purchasing or valuing a new picture.
Also there may be somewhere in Rosenberg as in earlier Joachimites, a
touch of imperialism, the kind which was known in London at the
crisis of the century's end, and which crops out here as a justifiable
pride in the supremacy of New York among art metropolises.
Myths of this order flourish among the intelligent only when there
is
some nourishment in fact. It is true, I think, that we are uniquely con·
scious of our existential freedom, and that the painter may enact
this
consciousness; if he paints pure contingency he is accordingly, in one
sense, painting "the times" as well as asserting his alienation from them.
If
this seems paradoxical, so is the bulk of ideological content it implies
in art that should have none. In writing so boldly about a nexus
of
problems that includes not only "crisis" but "identity" Rosenberg starts
paradox after paradox in his path. He is not evasive; he will tell
you
why de Kooning is a great master and will boldly distinguish a good
painter from the crowd-though by intuitions admittedly mqre obscure
and even less explicable than the criterion of Newness. It may seem un·
reasonable to want a more systematic statement of the theory; it may
be that no critic should be asked to provide anything of that kind
unless
he thinks it may help him in his work. But constant reference to
an
unformulated body of doctrine suggests that it is all there in some form
that could easily be got on to paper, and not to have it is a source
of
confusion and low spirits. Possibly it would seem out of keeping
with
the tumultuous nature of modem reality as Rosenberg understands it
to set down what might look like a key to its art; but accounts of
disorder do not need to be disorderly, and to deny the possibility of
resolving the ambiguities would be to reduce the positive force
and
potential value of nearly everything Rosenberg has said. Let him tell
us,
his tragic generation, just what is so special about our being tragic;
and let him say exactly what the New is, including what is old about
it
Frank Kennode
