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ELDERFIELD
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judgments.) Historicism and eclecticism are no more incapable of
yielding good art within their own terms of reference than are any
other modes of expression . But they do bring their own particular
dangers. One is that the unity they offer is merely a compensatory
unity - compensatory, that is, of the discontinuity with tradition
that they express - and, as such , limited to its specific historical mo–
ment. This is a real enough danger, but one with which modernism
itself has always had to deal.
More urgent , however, is the danger of academicism, which
can easily occur when styles that are stripped of the beliefs and com–
mitments that engendered them continue to be used. Neomodernist
art responds to the availability of the modernist past and, to the ex–
tent that it divides past from present and treats it as over and done
.with, risks enslavement to moribund forms - tends, in ignorance of
what produced past forms, simply to repeat them, exaggerating the
drawing perhaps, but that is all. Another danger is the invitation to
sentimentality , the risk of evoking sensations that are not fresh
challenges to taste but nostalgic references to past sensations - which
is always the hallmark of a reactionary art, however new it presents
itself as being. For this is in effect to surrender to received taste:
rather than forcing a revision of consumer values, it accredits them.
The original battle that produced modernism was fought
against academicism and popular taste. That modernism is now in–
stitutionalized is a fact of life, which should be accepted, but this
does not mean that its battles are over. Insofar as it is institutionalized,
it is all the more important that it continue to fight academicism. But
to do so by seeking separation from the past only makes it subser–
vient to popular taste, for popular taste always outflanks art in its
preoccupation with the new . And when art becomes preoccupied
with newness itself, it does not separate itself from popular taste but
actually responds to it, especially in traditional media like painting,
where a new look is not easily imposed . Hence the way in which
some recent art gives the impression of wanting entirely to escape
comparison with the great monuments of Western painting and to
allow of no appeal except to the localized and transient culture in
which it is situated - as is evidenced by the use of terms derived from
popular culture, especially popular music, to describe new tenden–
cies in art. Unlike popular music, however, which does not compete
with serious music, all contemporary art is finally judged on the
same scale and competes for our interest and our approval. The past
sets standards that art cannot escape .
