ART AND LITERATURE
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the parodic, has replaced the sense of deep engagement of the adventurous
art of a century ago. Paintings in 1996 frequently have surfaces as anony–
mous as maclUne-made objects or, conversely, seem to have been made by
the wholly unskilled. It's as though current practitioners not only reject
the possibili ty of "privileging," in the currently fashionable word, a par–
ticular work of art or kind of art, a particular culture or material, but they
don't quite believe in the significance of what they are engaged in.
Disclaimers are built-in, a self-aware disengagement that is closely related
to the camp sensibility that was brought into the realm of academic dis–
course thirty years ago by Susan Sontag. (The blurring of gender
distinctions, with special attention granted to female and homosexual sen–
sibilities, are frequently cited hallmarks of post-modernism, often set in
opposition to the presumed "patriarchal" stance of modernism.) "It has all
been done already, so don't expect us to take it seriously" is an implied
subtext of post-modernist art.
The radical art of a century ago was wholehearted, not cynical,
"straight" (admittedly in all current senses of the term, wlUch as I have just
noted, some would argue is a problem). It was based on a fundamental
belief in the potency of the visual and in the ability of the materials of
visual art to carry profound meaning. The certainties and harmony of the
Academy were supplanted by ambiguity and tension, but even these dis–
comfiting elements were tied to material presence. Much of the power and
the modernity of Cezanne's paintings, for example, obtain from their
inherent contradiction. His celebrated method of rendering form with
patches of warm and cool color creates a wholly convincing sense of bulk
and mass, but at the ame time, his deliberate placement of those patches
forcibly reminds us of the flatness of the canvas and the artifice of paint–
ing itself. His disjunctive touches, his slow accretion of carefully
orchestrated tonalities makes us recapitulate his fierce scrutiny of the
motif, so that the disembodied act of seeing becomes as physical and tan–
gible as the repetitive pats of pigment. Process, as much as result, affects our
response.
Present day artists' lack of trust in the materials of their art to be
expressive or communicative (which, of course, doesn't happen automati–
cally) is extended to the viewer as well. Present theory often assumes that
only someone with background, experiences, and proclivities identical to
the artist's can grasp his or her intentions, which means that the artist is
the best interpreter of IUs own work. To ensure "correct" understanding,
works of art come fully bolstered with explicit programs and directive
texts; text itself can become the work of art. No one seems to find any–
thing lacking in art that remains emotionally and aesthetically inert unless
explicated, but art devoid of a program that can be put into words is
deemed to be empty. (That artists and cri tics habitually use "information"
