WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ARTS?
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The Brits have learned from their American predecessors, Robert
Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. There is in their work the initial sur–
prise, oddly similar to what one gets suddenly seeing a nude mannequin
in a department store window. At first glance it appears alive, and the
more alive it appears, the more dead it becomes, and we turn away,
somewhat embarrassed, hoping no one noticed. We feel we ought not to
have looked. We feel we were taken in. All window dressing has that
intent, as does johns's American flags or Rauschenberg's stuffed goat.
Feminist art is very much a part of the current scene. Feminist art is
often a matter of words repeated forever on a gallery wall. Favorite
words are
peace
and
ruck.
Frequently the focus is on genitalia, their
own. Watching TV the other night I was able to gather examples of fem–
inist "word art" by some of the masters of the genre: "What urge will
serve us, now that sex won't." "Men don't protect you anymore." And
the one I liked best: "1 shop, therefore I am." I have the feeling I've left
something out. Oh, yes, menstrual art.
If
the goal of art, as Nicholas Poussin said, is delight, what motivates
the art that presently prevails? I suppose a hatred for our traditions, for
the institutions that support our democracy and a hatred for excellence.
I sense a reflexive self-hate, as well. Tenured intellectuals in our top col–
leges and universities, once radical students of the sixties, breaking win–
dows in the institutions they attended "to let the air in," as they said,
grinning impishly, now attack common sense and commonsensical real–
ity with language opaque, incomprehensible, enough to make the mem–
bers of the Flat Earth Society appear almost sensible. Read for example
Jacques Derrida on the art of painting.
I believe art is expressive of the reality of its time.
If
present abomi–
nations prevail, we are in trouble. I am told an artist is, at present,
exhibiting corpses, which he drains of their fluids and injects with some
kind of plastic material. Flesh hangs draped over their bones. A fetus is
visible inside the woman's belly. Even Dante would have averted his
eyes. But not so the
New York Times,
which showed a photograph.
I look at the cave art of Lascaux,
15,000
years old, and Chauvet,
30,000
years old, and other caves recently explored. Here is art, elegant,
beautiful, sophisticated. Degas, who could really draw, would have been
impressed.
Mati~se,
a master of color, would have fainted. (He did have
a tendency to tremble in front of the canvas.) The tension of the cave art
throbs, alive with felt experience, with danger, darkness. It is art of qual–
ity, high art.
I look at early medieval art. It's expressive reality. Nothing moves,
change is incomprehensible. God is above, the sun revolves around the
