By the 1970s Wolfe was, according to Douglas Davis of
NewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly newsmagazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
magazine "more of a celebrity than the celebrities he describes." The success of Wolfe's previous books, in particular
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid TestThe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a work of literary journalism by Tom Wolfe, published in 1968. Using techniques from the genre of hysterical realism and pioneering new journalism, the novel tells the story of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters...
in 1968 and
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak CatchersRadical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers was a 1970 book by Tom Wolfe. The book, Wolfe's fourth, is composed of two articles by Wolfe, "These Radical Chic Evenings," first published in June of 1970 in New York magazine, about a gathering Leonard Bernstein held for the Black Panther Party and...
in 1970 had given Wolfe
carte blanche from his publisher to pursue any topic he desired. In the midst of working on stories about the space program for
Rolling StoneRolling Stone is a United States-based magazine devoted to music, politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J. Gleason.The magazine was named after the 1948 Muddy Waters song of the same...
—stories that would eventually grow into the 1979 book
The Right StuffThe Right Stuff is a 1979 book by Tom Wolfe about the pilots engaged in U.S. postwar experiments with experimental rocket-powered, high-speed aircraft as well as documenting the stories of the first Project Mercury astronauts selected for the NASA space program...
—Wolfe became interested in writing a book about modern art.
Background
By the 1970s Wolfe was, according to Douglas Davis of
NewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly newsmagazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
magazine "more of a celebrity than the celebrities he describes." The success of Wolfe's previous books, in particular
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid TestThe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a work of literary journalism by Tom Wolfe, published in 1968. Using techniques from the genre of hysterical realism and pioneering new journalism, the novel tells the story of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters...
in 1968 and
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak CatchersRadical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers was a 1970 book by Tom Wolfe. The book, Wolfe's fourth, is composed of two articles by Wolfe, "These Radical Chic Evenings," first published in June of 1970 in New York magazine, about a gathering Leonard Bernstein held for the Black Panther Party and...
in 1970 had given Wolfe
carte blanche from his publisher to pursue any topic he desired. In the midst of working on stories about the space program for
Rolling StoneRolling Stone is a United States-based magazine devoted to music, politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J. Gleason.The magazine was named after the 1948 Muddy Waters song of the same...
—stories that would eventually grow into the 1979 book
The Right StuffThe Right Stuff is a 1979 book by Tom Wolfe about the pilots engaged in U.S. postwar experiments with experimental rocket-powered, high-speed aircraft as well as documenting the stories of the first Project Mercury astronauts selected for the NASA space program...
—Wolfe became interested in writing a book about modern art. As a journalist, Wolfe had devoted much of his writing career to pursuing
realismRealism in the visual arts and literature is the depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life, without embellishment or interpretation...
; in the world of art, even more than in literature, Wolfe was disturbed by the lack of any persuasive theory of realism.
Prior to publication in book form,
The Painted Word was excerpted in
Harper's MagazineHarper's Magazine is a monthly, general-interest magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. It is the second-oldest, continuously-published monthly magazine in the U.S.; current circulation is more than 220,000 issues...
. Wolfe's longtime publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux released the book in 1975.
Themes
Wolfe's thesis in
The Painted Word was that by the 1970s
modern artModern art refers to artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
had moved away from being a visual experience, and more often was an illustration of art critics' theories. Wolfe criticized avant-garde art,
Andy WarholAndrew Warhola , more commonly known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
,
Willem de KooningWillem de Kooning was an abstract expressionist artist, born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.In the post-World War II era, de Kooning painted in a style that came to be referred to variously as Abstract expressionism, Action painting, and the New York School...
and
Jackson PollockPaul Jackson Pollock was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality and struggled with alcoholism all of...
. The main target of Wolfe's book, however, was not so much the artists as the critics. In particular, Wolfe criticized three prominent art critics whom he dubbed the kings of "Cultureburg":
Clement GreenbergClement Greenberg was an influential American art critic closely associated with Modern art in the United States...
,
Harold RosenbergHarold Rosenberg was an American writer, educator, philosopher and art critic. He coined the term Action Painting in 1952 for what was later to be known as abstract expressionism. The term was first employed in Rosenberg's essay "American Action Painters" published in the December 1952 issue of...
and
Leo SteinbergLeo Steinberg is an American art critic and art historian and a naturalized citizen of the U.S. He is the son of Isaac Nachman Steinberg.Steinberg has won literary awards as well as awards for his criticism...
. Wolfe argued that these three men were dominating the world of art with their theories and that, unlike the world of literature in which anyone can buy a book, the art world was controlled by an insular circle of rich collectors, museums and critics with out-sized influence.
Wolfe provides his own history of what he sees as the devolution to modern art. He summarized that history: "In the beginning we got rid of nineteenth-century storybook realism. Then we got rid of representational objects. Then we got rid of the third dimension altogether and got really flat (Abstract Expressionism). Then we got rid of airiness, brushstrokes, most of the paint, and the last viruses of drawing and complicated designs". After providing examples of other techniques and the schools that abandoned them, Wolfe concluded with
conceptual artConceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
: "…there, at last, it was! No more realism, no more representation objects, no more lines, colors, forms, and contours, no more pigments, no more brushstrokes. … Art made its final flight, climbed higher and higher in an ever-decreasing tighter-turning spiral until…it disappeared up its own fundamental aperture…and came out the other side as Art Theory!…Art Theory pure and simple, words on a page, literature undefiled by vision…late twentieth-century Modern Art was about to fulfill its destiny, which was: to become nothing less than Literature pure and simple".
Critical reception
"
The Painted Word hit the art world like a really bad, MSG-headache-producing, Chinese lunch," wrote
Rosalind E. KraussRosalind Krauss is an American art critic, professor, and theorist who is based at Columbia University.- Biography :...
in
Partisan ReviewPartisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:It was founded by William Phillips, Philip Rahv, and Sender Garlin...
. By ridiculing the most respected members of the art world establishment, Wolfe had ensured that the reaction to his book would be negative. Many reviewers dismissed Wolfe as someone simply too ignorant of art to write about it.
Other critics responded with such similar vitriol and hostility that Wolfe said their response demonstrated that the art community only talked to each other. A review in
The New RepublicThe New Republic is an American magazine of politics and the arts. It is published semimonthly and has a circulation of approximately 60,000. The editor-in-chief is Martin Peretz and the current editor is Franklin Foer...
called Wolfe a fascist and compared him to the brain-washed assassin in the film
The Manchurian CandidateThe Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon, is a political thriller novel about the son of a prominent US political family who has been brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communist Party...
. Wolfe was particularly amused, however, by a series of criticisms that resorted to "X-rated insults." An artist compared him to "A six-year-old at a pornographic movie; he can follow the action of the bodies but he can't comprehend the
nuances." A critic in
Time Magazine used the same image, but with an 11-year-old boy. A review in
The New York Times Book ReviewThe New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The New York Times has published a book review section...
used the image again, clarifying that the boy was a eunuch. The opening of the review in
Partisan ReviewPartisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:It was founded by William Phillips, Philip Rahv, and Sender Garlin...
compared Wolfe to the star of the pornographic film
Deep ThroatDeep Throat is a 1972 American pornographic film written and directed by Gerard Damiano and starring Linda Lovelace ....
. She viewed Wolfe's lack of a suggestion for what should replace modern art as similar in their ignorance to statements
Linda LovelaceLinda Susan Boreman , better known by her stage name "Linda Lovelace", was a porn actress who was famous for her performance of deep throat fellatio in the enormously successful 1972 hardcore porn film Deep Throat...
made about
Deep Throat being a "kind of goof."
In defense of critics Rosenberg, Greenberg, and Steinberg, Rosalind Krauss noted that each man wrote about art "in ways that are entirely diverse." Writing in
NewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly newsmagazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, Douglas Davis wrote that
The Painted Word fails because of how it departed from Wolfe's previous works. Wolfe's other non-fiction, Davis wrote, was deeply reported, but here "Wolfe did not get away from the typewriter and out into the thick of his subject."
Outside the art community, some reviewers noted that however unpopular Wolfe's book may have been in art circles, many of his observations were essentially correct, particularly about the de-objectification of art and the rise of art theory.
External links