PARTISAN REVIEW
211
On one level, every stylistic change in the history of art may
be viewed as an Oedipal confrontation. However, as the ruptures
between generations become greater, and entire systems of values are
at variance, the generational confrontation takes on a more and more
violent character. All forms of rebellion are revolts against authority;
but the degree to which this authority is held to be illegitimate be–
comes critical. The initial rebellion of the avant-garde in the nine–
teenth century took place within the context of a specific and gen–
erally understood discipline. How much classical academicism re–
flected the values of an entire social structure, its investment in ideals
of hierarchical order, is revealed by the violence with which the
questioners of these values were attacked by the public. They were
jeered at, mocked, deprived of honors and status, deliberately
im–
poverished, and forced to live as classless bohemians. When we read
Manet's and Degas's letters, we realize how ill-prepared the artist was
for such rejection, and how much he continued to crave society's
acceptance. For no mere stylistic change in the past had ever evoked
such hostility from society at large. Therefore something greater than
stylistic change must have been at stake in these first manifestations
of the modem spirit.
The equation of a disruption of the social order with a disrup–
tion of the cultural order was not the intention of the artists who
originally caused these disruptions. Once cast out from society, how–
ever, they had no choice but to play the role of pariah which society
had assigned them. Yet they never ceased suffering from rejection,
for their goals were highly idealistic. It is at this stage of rejection,
for example, that we get figures like Van Gogh and Gauguin, tor–
tured by guilt because of the discrepancy between the idealism of
their intentions and the reception of their art by society.
Van Gogh's career as a missionary and evangelist testifies to the
extreme idealism of his personality; as does Gauguin's religious ico–
nography. Yet both ended as martyrs - Van Gogh a suicide, Gau–
guin an exile. Both were haunted by masochistic guilt feelings express–
ing
the conflict between their own conception of the good and society's
values. Gauguin's self-portrait in the National Gallery in Washing–
ton, for example, illustrates this conflict, for he shows himself with
both angelic and diabolic attributes - a celestial halo as well as the
devil's pronged tail.
