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The Public Be Damned By Huntington Hartford R. DONALD ADAMS, a critic writ- music or literature. If music lacks M ing in the New York Times, melody, it grates harshly on the ear. has the following to say about his If a book uses too many garbled profession: "I doubt that criticism sentences, you stop reading. But has ever reached a point as low as painting — it's a free-for-all! You that to which it has fallen today. make up your own rules today, and With few exceptions, criticism has anything goes. become a monkish practice, divorced Do many art critics deliberately from life, bastardized by the as- set out to deceive and confuse and sumption of scientific method, writ- demoralize the public? ten in intolerable English, a jargon- Let us look for a moment into the ized medium of exchange between a pages of the Art News, often con- group of individuals talking to one sidered the foremost magazine of its another and busily thumbing their kind in the country. When the Art noses at the average intelligent News sets to work to explain a paint- reader." ing, does the writer make a sincere With criticism in America, by its effort to point out salient features own admission, having fallen to such which may help the intelligent depths, it is hardly surprising that reader to understand what he is our standards of literature and the talking about? arts have fallen with it. But no- Mr. Willem de Kooning, Dutch where have these standards taken artist turned American, spent two such a dive as in the field of paint- years working on a painting en- ing. Why has the fiasco of modern titled "Woman" which was repro- art not been possible to the same ex- duced in varying stages of comple- tent in literature or music or the tion in the magazine. From every drama? First, because people have standpoint the final result was a traditionally been able to walk into hodge-podge, and I wondered how museums free; they are willing to be the critic would explain it. a bit gullible when it costs them "In the case of 'Woman,' de nothing. Again, standards in paint- Kooning's latest," said he, "the ing have never been as obvious as in stages of the painting ... are nei- 35 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED The ^American Mercury ther better nor worse, more or less biguity," says the Art News enthu- 'finished' than the terminus. Some siastically, "exactingly sought and might appear more satisfactory than exactingly left undefined has been the ending, but this is irrelevant." the recurrent theme in 'Woman'." It was irrelevant to the Art News, in I am frankly bitter against those other words, whether the painting who encourage obscurity in painting was better when completed than — bitter because the kind of warped when it was begun. In fact, the thinking which creates it is one ol critic went so far as to make a virtue the prime movers in the current de- of the delay in finishing it; he spoke humanization of the arts. I am bitter of the work which de Kooning did in about the methods of mass produc- his Greenwich Village studio as a tion which require only bright flat "voyage," and even talked about colors and startling designs — re- '"the cities that were visited, friends gardless of subject matter! — to at- that were met." Perhaps Mark tract the eye in the pages of slick- Twain had a better idea of this pic- paper magazines. I am bitter, most ture when he told of the drawing of of all, against the critics for either a lady who had as many arms as a their utter irresponsibility or their spider because the artist could never auto-hypnosis — I have been unable decide which was the best pose. to decide which — concerning mod- How did the critic describe the ern art. painting itself? Let us quote him. You look at one of these con- "At first 'Woman' was sitting in- temporary abstractions, and you doors on a chair. Then a window- can't make head or tail of it. "Just shape at the upper right established use your imagination," the critic a wall and distance — but she could tells you, "and you will begin to see have been outside a house as well as what it really means to you." inside, or in an inside-outside porch "What does it mean to you?" you space. This state of anonymous sim- ask a bit defiantly as you stare at ultaneity (not no-specific-place but utter chaos. several no-specific-places) is seen "A bluebird winging its way across more clearly in the few 'objects' a lagoon in the moonlight," he re- which appeared, then disappeared plies without a tremor. around the seated figure. De Koon- "But I can't see that at all," you ing claims the modern scene is no- counter. environment and presen ts it as such." "Of course not!" he exclaims tri- umphantly. "To each individual the HAT kind of double-talk is this painting means something different. Wfor the art departments of To John Doe it is a python slowly universities throughout the country curling its way about an elephant's to pass on to their students? "Am- trunk. To Jim Jones it is Fifth Ave- PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED The Tublic He T)amned 37 nue and Forty-Second Street on a about seeing "nothin' but nothin' hot summer day. This painting was and then some more nothin'." When created with such purity and free- Casanova made a long romantic dom of expression that no two hu- speech to Camille about his shirt man beings can see it in the same tails being aflame with love, she re- way." plied, "Don't con me." What can you possibly answer to Although Brooks Atkinson, the such nonsense? Having cleared the dean of the theatre critics, called deck of all legitimate standards of this play "as eloquent and rhythmic art, the critics are quite tree to make as a piece of music," the public had their own standards and establish a different opinion of it. "There their own little dictatorship. The art have been plenty of indications," world has its constitution and its bill admitted the playwright, "that this of rights too, my friends, and when play will exasperate and confuse a you become party to their public certain number of people. ... At burning in the streets, when you re- each performance a number of peo- fuse to stand up for your own opin- ple have stamped out of the audi- ion even in so insignificant a branch torium, with little regard for those of your life as this, you are hastening whom they have to crawl over, al- the day when you will no longer most as if the building had caught on have the opportunity to voice that fire, and there have been sibilant opinion. noises on the way out and demands It is perhaps unfortunate that the for money back if the cashier is fool- art-loving public is not required to ish enough to remain in his box." pay four-eighty top to spend an evening looking at paintings, for on T EXASPERATED the public, all occasion their reaction might be I right, and closed in a few weeks. fully as vociferous as that of the But if it had been an exhibition of theatre-goers, and the art critics "avant garde" modern art the critics might wake up to the true value of would have managed to breathe arti- their wares. ficial respiration into it for months. Tennessee Williams recently It appears that I am doing a good wrote a play called Camino Real. deal of raving and ranting, and per- The setting was classified in the pro- haps the long-suffering reader is be- gram as having no time and no place. ginning to wonder if all my com- A chorus of dancers were described ment is on the destructive side. in the stage directions as having "a Quite the contrary — I have defi- look of immense torpor as if they nite standards and ideals concerning were stunned or drugged." The painting. But before I discuss them hero, Kilroy, walked about with a I would like to present a definition. red light blinking on his nose talking I have used the word "abstraction" PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED The <jlmerican Mercury in reference to modern art and in broad-minded enough to accept the general I used it as a catch-all to most flagrant kind of abstractionism include a multitude of sins. But the as gospel? But is it not equally true word is also useful in a more positive that a painter living during the sense: there is the need for a general eighteenth century in France would term to represent painting — so have been burned in effigy if he did prevalent today — at the opposite not worship at the shrine of the pole from the photographic. When purely photographic? ordinary objects are stylized to the Which of these schools of thought point of being symbols, for example, represents great art? It should be ob- the picture becomes an abstraction. vious to the merest neophyte in the When harmony of color and line is subject that neither do; great art carried to the point of cubism, the lies somewhere between the two result can be termed abstraction; extremes, in the area where the per- when the desire of the artist (under sonality of the artist has a chance to the title of expressionism) is to express itself.

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