Barbara Rose
ART AS MONEY
I never wanted to be an art critic . For years I practiced the
piano, hoping to become a concert musician like my mother's cous–
ins. My first act of criticism was to stop playing the piano ; my sec–
ond was to quit painting . I thought the arts deserved a more discern–
ing audience rather than additional mediocre talents competing for
attention. I believed art was difficult, demanding and rewarding,
and that its appreciation required study and effort. At Smith Col–
lege, I started with the Egyptians, gradually working my way up
through the ages to Post-Impressionism. I was not interested in
modern art, American art, or journalism. I became an art critic
because I was married to a painter; it was a way of making money
and staying home with the children . I wrote about American art for
my students, who had no text . Journalism later became the means to
earn a living.
After spending a year in Spain on a Fulbright Fellowship , I
published my first critical reviews for the Spanish magazine
Goya.
I
wrote the
Cronica de Nueva York
because I realized that Franco's cen–
sorship was so effective that Spanish artists did not even have repro–
ductions of contemporary art.
In
1962, I returned to the United
States from Spain to have my first child . Michael Fried persuaded
me to try to publish an article on pop art as neo-Dada, which I had
started working on in Berlin. I submitted it to James Fitzsimmons,
the late editor of
Art International.
He printed it and asked me to do a
monthly New York Letter. Michael Fried was already writing from
New York, and Annette Michelson was reviewing from Paris. The
moment was very exciting. Clement Greenberg had just published
his collection of essays,
Art and Culture.
A group of brilliant young
artists, including Frank Stella, to whom I was married at the time,
were creating anti-expressionist styles that captured the imagination
of dealers and collectors anxious to assert an autonomous American
cultural identity.
In
retrospect, I realize how provincial the outlook was . This in-
Editor's Note: A version of this essay
will
appear as the introduction to
Autocritique.
Essays on Art and Anti-A rt.
1963-1987 by Barbara Rose, to be published this spring by
Weidenfeld
&
Nicolson . Copyright
C
1988
by Barbara Rose.
