WILLIAM BARRETT
397
The more inflation the less seriousness about the art itself. The
kinds of ambition for the individual work that the movement-and
DeKooning particularly-had back in the late forties would seem
strange nowadays. There is more trifling with the tricks of the me–
dium, non-art as art, nihilism toward art-in a word, camp. As the
substance becomes more minimal the rhetoric about it becomes more
inflated. A recent ad in
PR
(I don't of course hold the magazine
responsible for its advertisements) announced a collection of stories
under the title
Superfiction.
Isn't it enough for the writer to aim at a
good piece of fiction, which becomes all the harder as literary history
accumulates, without seeking some new and inflated genre? "Super–
colossal" used to be Hollywoodese, but the literary seem now to be
aping that style.
In the history of art the great movements-the Renaissance
(which was really two different movements), the Baroque, etc.-ran
their course in less than a century. Their followers couldn't see, or
didn't want to see, when the original wave had run out. As the imi–
tations got more elaborate they became emptier, more inflated as
they became more contrived. Similarly, nobody seems to want to face
up to the fact that the great Modern movement has by now come
to an end.
That should be an opportunity for the critics to reexamine that
movement and find out what was really happening. They might be
surprised to discover the traditional values that were always present
in it. Art
is,
after all, one of the most traditional of human enter–
prises . Thus modern art taught us to see primitive art. Now that the
superficial novelties have worn off. how Proust resembles Balzac, or
Joyce, Dickens, begins
t~
interest us as much as the differences . Once
DeKooning was trying to do the same thing as Giotto-to impart as
much movement and tension to the pictorial surface as possible.
One great legacy of the Modern movement could be that it
taught us to take experimentation in our stride. We're no longer
shocked by it, but we're no longer taken in by it either. We allow the
artist all the gimmicks he pleases; but when we have looked past
them, we have to put to
him
the simple and central question: Does
he have anything to say? We may discover he is empty. That might be
enlightening. We might discover we are empty, too. That could be
a beginning.
