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PARTISAN REVIEW
As for modern art itself, Bell claims the trouble started with the
modernist impulse, which contained the seeds of our cu ltural debase–
ment today. The list of its sins is a long one: modernism was in a false
adversary relation to bourgeois society, without being sufficiently
political; modernism eulogized the self; it wallowed in hedonism; it
broke down all limits to self-expression, particularly in matters of sex
and eroticism; it was antirational, nihilistic, and formless; it failed to
maintain its own elitist standards by cultivating the "tradition of the
new," which transformed the work of art into a process; it replaced
control of the medium with the idea of authenticity of experience; it
"eclipsed" distance in space and time; it eroded the Protestant work
ethic, and elevated the principles of play and pleasure; it tended to erase
the "boundary between life and art"; it celebrated the demonic; it paid
homage to madness. Of course, anyone familiar with cu ltural history
will immediately recognize the common litany of conservative com–
plaints against modernism, going back to Irving Babbit and Paul
Elmer More, which Bell sums up as the esthetics of shock and
sensation. But Bell makes the scene even gloomier by arguing both
ways: by blaming modernism and the avant-garde for the low state of
the culture and then turning around and bemoaning their death. Thus
not on ly is traditional culture buried, though it is not really clear just
what traditional culture is as distinct from modernism, but now we
a lso learn that the decadent culture that killed it is no longer with us.
Nor is it clear what has taken its place, though Bell seems to imply that
some kind of universal pop, a mixture of lowbrow and middlebrow,
fortified with the adversary postures of the old avant-garde, has taken
over on all levels of the culture.
As I have been suggesting, it is difficult to deal with Bell's ideas
about the art and the culture. He is an intelligent and learned man, but
he writes like an outsider, in breathless Spenglerian categories at once
too broad and too narrow, lacking the feel for the medium and the
texture of a work that artists and good critics have, and unable,
therefore, to make the proper modulations, distinctions, or connec–
tions. He rushes from one generalization to the next, as though the
specific quality of a work or its critical resonance did not matter. And
though he refers to various critics, the tone of his writing does not
indicate an acquaintance with the range or subtlety of recent criticism.
Let me give some examples. At one point, Bell says
