444
HAROLD ROSENBERG
nothing as against the weight of data accumulated in support of in–
terpretations that replace the work itself through the hearsay of the
media. Who reads a novel or a poem except to collect evidence for
or against its author?
Cultural Old Bolshevism hangs on, the manners of defiance are
mimicked, there are even efforts to appear atrocious, as by praising
crime and boring movies. An assistant professor of English, writing in
the
Times Book Review
on a work by the Marquis de Sade, finds his
tortures of servant girls tame and is prepared to fit him into middle–
class reading lists. Is the professor radical or conservative? His per–
formance is a form of professionalism, a conformist way of making it.
In the absence of cultural revolution, the friends and foes of tradi–
tional values can at best supply the daily bread of columnists and TV
discussion programs.
In art, "conservative" and "radical" ought to be abandoned and
attention concentrated on
deja vu.
The purpose of education is to keep
a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which
claims to offer a new insight. In America, an almost total absence of
genuine education in modernist creations and attitudes of the past hun–
dred years is responsible for wave after wave of
deja vu
novelties. The
dejavunik
exploits his audience's lack of education by appealing to
the desire to be advanced and by meeting the public expectation to
be repelled by new work. Today, cultural professionals can count on
avant-garde
deja vu
to arouse the enthusiasm of undergraduate movie–
makers, post-art aesthetes, far-out curators and collector-dealers for
whatever makes the grade as
Time-Newsweek
shock.
Social and/or aesthetic far-outness is a public relations technique
aimed at the presumed indignation of a stable middle class that ceased
to exist four decades ago. The indignation of the same nonexistent
middle class is exploited by social and/or aesthetic conservatism. The
only real choice is whether to accept a part in the radical-conservative
playacting or to affirm the tradition of critical secession.
There are no objective issues in contemporary culture, and no
need to take a position. To champion new works because they are new
is as orthodox an approach as to attack them for the same reason.
There is the question of the creative individual, but on this question
advocacy is absurd. What can one do to help make individuals creative?
One might as well be in favor of genius. Besides, who is against crea–
tion? From the Pentagon to the rug industry, everyone is enthusiastic
about the creative. Hippies are for creation as against everything else.
Conservatives who are opposed to hippies see themselves as champions
of "real" creation. Clem Greenberg is for "high" art, and denounces
Duchamp as a backward influence in comparison with whom John
Canaday deserves' support.
If
creation is an issue, it is one in which only negative behavior is
publicly feasible, that is, persistent attack on institutions, ideas and
personalities who are obstacles to creation. But society as a whole con–
stantly emits these obstacles. Even what is begun with the best inten–
tions turns out to be detrimental - support of art by banks promotes
bank-type art, and so on. So one is opposed to society, one assumes
a political stance, for cultural reasons. Yet one is aware that no polit-
