608
PARTISAN REVIEW
Anton Chekhov, who couldn't write a sentence that didn't lift one's
spirit, said, "We all came out of Gogol's 'Overcoat.'" The abominations
of postmodernist art came out of Duchamp's urinal. Soon enough, the
taste for excrement was bound to follow, to be celebrated in its turn.
I am told that thirty years ago, an Italian artist packaged his feces
(I'm going to use the Yiddish word,
dreck)
and apparently tried to sell
it. I can't imagine who would buy it. He sold it by the pound with the
label,
Artist Shit.
One wonders how it was packaged.
New York, for a time the center of advanced art, has given way to
London, which is now the center for low art. That is our good fortune.
Tony Blair celebrates the antics of such artists as Damien Hirst and
Chris Ofiii, stars of the sensational
Sensation
show at the Brooklyn
Museum. Mr. Hirst arrived on the art scene with half the carcass of a
cow awash in formaldehyde. Mr. Ofiii, a more serious, more talented
British artist than Mr. Hirst (but then again, who isn't?), actually paints
pictures on canvas. However, his success is not based on his talent, but
on his liberal use of elephant dung. Surely gorillas await their turn. The
art draws attention for reasons having little or nothing to do with art,
yet it pretends to be avant-garde. In reality, it's academic art, easy to get,
style over substance. Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropol–
itan Museum, coming away from the
Sensation
show observed in the
New York Times,
"The emperor has no clothes"; for that he was reviled
by many of his peers, who simplistically believe, no matter how lacking
in quality, if it's new, it must be good, even great.
How demoralized our art lovers that they can look at
dreck
presented
as art and not say, "Good God! This is really shit."
Suddenly, everything, no mater how inane, insane, obscene, or just
plain silly became "interesting." A young British art dealer described to
me his excitement upon seeing Damien Hirst's half cow. He asked me
what I thought. I told him I'd not actually seen it, except in reproduc–
tion. "Yes, but what do you think?" he asked.
I said, "It looks like something you'd see in the
National Enquirer.
But
you saw the work. Did it give you a lift? Did it move you to delight?"
"Not really," he said. "But half a cow in formaldehyde! So surpris–
ing, so interesting, don't you think? As an idea?"
"The idea," I said, "about half a cow. Now
that
is interesting." Our
conversation, of course, languished.
Interesting as an idea. At least Christo's wrappings try to evoke the
beautiful. At least he makes a gesture of sorts in the direction of aes–
thetic experience, though, to my eye, not nearly enough.
