Table Of ContentRoger Kimball
Art’s Prospect
The Challenge of Tradition
in an Age of Celebrity
Roger Kimball is Managing Editor of The New Criterion
and an art critic for the London Spectator. His previous
books include Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted
Our Higher Education, The Long March: How the Cultural
Revolution of the 1960s Changed America, and Experiments
Against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age.
He has also edited Against the Idols of the Age, an anthol-
ogy of writings by the Australian philosopher David Stove,
and a new edition of Walter Bagehot’s Physics and Politics,
a classic Victorian refl ection on the material and moral
preconditions of civilization. In addition, Mr. Kimball has
contributed to and co-edited, with Hilton Kramer, several
volumes of essays, including The Betrayal of Liberalism: How
the Disciples of Freedom and Equality Helped Foster the Illiberal
Politics of Coercion and Control. Mr. Kimball is a frequent
contributor to many journals and newspapers, including The
New Criterion, The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary
Supplement, National Review, The Public Interest, and The New
York Times Book Review.
Art’s Prospect
The Challenge of Tradition
in an Age of Celebrity
Roger Kimball
Cybereditions
Cybereditions Corporation
Christchurch, New Zealand
www.cybereditions.com
[email protected]
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Copyright © 2002 Roger Kimball
The moral right of the author is asserted.
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ISBN 1-877275-48-4
Cover illustration: William Bailey, Still Life with Bottle, Bowl
and Vase, reproduced by permission of William Bailey.
Contents
Introduction: Out of the Limelight 7
Part One
The Museum as Funhouse 13
Betraying a Legacy: The Case of the Barnes Foundation 27
Can Art be Defi ned? 38
Julius Meier-Graefe Discovers El Greco 44
Félix Fénéon Discovers Seurat 48
Roger Fry 52
Michael Fried Does Courbet 56
Feeling Sorry for Rosalind Krauss 59
The Achievement of Clement Greenberg 69
Part Two
Paul Gauguin and the Ideal of the Primitive 87
Vincent van Gogh 94
Edward Burne-Jones 98
Gustave Moreau: Between Epic and Dream 102
Pissarro’s Urbanities 106
Renoir’s Portraits 110
Mary Cassatt 114
Matisse in Morocco 118
Thomas Eakins in London 124
Paul Klee 128
Kazimir Malevich 131
Alberto Giacometti 137
Picasso as Portraitist 142
Fernand Léger 147
Mark Rothko 151
Part Three
The Whitney Biennial 1997 157
Drunk on Andy Warhol 161
Francis Bacon: Another Genius on Parade 170
Grotesque 173
Robert Rauschenberg: Today’s Golden Dustman 178
Gilbert and George: The Psychopathology of Culture 182
Sigmar Polke 186
Richard Diebenkorn 189
Graham Nickson and The New York Studio School 193
John Dubrow 196
Odd Nerdrum 201
Tom Goldenberg: Art without Apology 204
William Bailey: Animating Twilight 209
Index 215
Introduction:
Out of the Limelight
In “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T. S. Eliot famously
criticized
our tendency, when we praise a poet, to insist upon those aspects of
his work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects
or parts of his work we pretend to fi nd what is individual, what is
the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon
the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate
predecessors; we endeavour to fi nd something that can be isolated
in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this
prejudice we shall often fi nd that not only the best, but the most
individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets,
his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously.
The same argument goes for other arts. Perhaps the chief virtue
of Eliot’s essay was to remind us of how superfi cial and artistically
limiting the Romantic cult of novelty can be. The pretense that the
traditional is the enemy rather than the presupposition of original-
ity devalues art’s chief source of pertinence: its continuity with the
past.
Anyone looking for evidence of this does not have far to seek. A
quick glance around our culture shows that the avant-garde assault
on tradition has long since degenerated into a sclerotic orthodoxy.
What established taste makers now herald as cutting-edge turns
7
8 Art’s Prospect
out time and again to be a stale remainder of past impotence. It
is one of history’s ironies that Romantic fervor regularly declines
into antic murmurs. Most of the really invigorating action in the
art world today is a quiet affair. It takes place not at Tate Modern
or the Museum of Modern Art, not in the Chelsea or TriBeCa gal-
leries, but off to one side, out of the limelight. It tends to involve
not the latest thing, but permanent things. Permanent things can
be new; they can be old; but their relevance is measured not by the
buzz they create but by the silences they inspire.
Art’s Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity is
intended as an illustration of these truths. It is composed of reviews
and essays, originally written from the late 1980s through early 2001
and mostly revised for this volume. It is not a chronicle but rather a
directed sampling, culled and arranged with an eye to illuminating
some of the chief spiritual itineraries of modern art. Accordingly,
this brief book makes no claim to completeness. What I have tried
to provide is a collage whose elements, when seen from one per-
spective, add up to a diagnosis of a malady and, when seen from
another perspective, provide hints of where effective remedies can
be found. I am under no illusion that this will be a popular book.
Many of the fi gures I criticize currently enjoy semi-beatifi ed status
in the art establishment, while many I praise are routinely vilifi ed
or effectively ignored. Still, there is something to be said for step-
ping back from the great media parade of contemporary culture
now and again to point out that many of those proclaimed to be
emperors are, in fact, stark naked. By the same token, it is worth
calling attention to some of the many talents that, for one reason
or another, the celebrity parade decides to pass by without, or with
only insuffi cient, notice.
I am grateful to Denis Dutton, of Cybereditions, for suggesting
that I undertake this volume and publish it in what is still a somewhat
daring format. Perhaps those who denounce my opinions as hide-
bound will appreciate this small evidence of advanced sentiment. I
Introduction 9
am also grateful to the editors of the several publications where the
original versions of these essays appeared: The Wall Street Journal,
The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, The New Criterion, The
Public Interest, National Review, Modern Painters, Art and Antiques,
and Museum and Arts Washington.
Finally, I would like to register my deep gratitude to the many
friends, colleagues, and editors over the years who helped make the
contents of this book a reality. They know who they are, but you do
not, so let me mention at least some of them: Elisabeth Anderson,
Christopher Carduff, Erich Eichman, Joseph Epstein, Irving Kristol,
Sara Lussier, Robert Messenger, Adam Wolfson, and David Yezzi.
Special thanks are due to Hilton Kramer, who has done more than
anyone to teach me about the vocation of criticism, and to Alexandra
Kimball, for ministrations too various to catalogue. Mille grazie.
Roger Kimball
Norwalk, Connecticut
