Storr vs. Danto
January 22nd, 2006Last week I went to an art lecture, really more of a conversation, held uptown between Robert Storr and Arthur Danto, two esteemed art critics.
You know I like Robert Storr. I like his writings, I like his attitude, I like his hair. A friend pointed out to me that he chooses to champion some pretty dubious artists (Philip Pearlstein, Chuck Close). I don’t care—we all have our tastes and Storr’s tastes are refreshingly broad and and his writing insightful.
It turns out I also like Danto, kind of an oddball grandfather type, slightly heavyset with a white beard, gregarious and opinionated. He said that American critics whose ideas are derived from continental philosophy of the past century (basically the editors of OCTOBER) were “medieval” and had no relation to the art being produced today. Danto comes to art by way of philosophy (and he came to philosophy by way of art, coming to New York from Detroit to be an Abstract Expressionist). In regard to art, his philosophical concerns are primarily ontological—seeing the Warhol Brillo Box show in the mid-sixties was a breakthrough moment. “What makes these Brillo Boxes—which look just like the ones in the grocery store, despite being made of plywood—different from the ones in the grocery store?” he said to himself and off he went to write several books which I’ve heard are good, but haven’t read.
The high point of the evening came when Storr and Danto butted heads for ten minutes over the merits of Bruce Nauman, Storr was pro-Nauman, Danto was against. Storr gave a reasoned, detailed appeal but Danto wasn’t having it.
Here are Arthur Danto’s reasons for not liking Nauman:
1. Nauman always assumes an antagonistic relationship to his audience
2. Too noisy
3. Relies on lame jokes
4. Danto didn’t need to take that crap
I think those are pretty good reasons. I’ve never really fallen in love with Nauman, even though liking him is pretty much a prerequisite if you want to be a hip young artist. Maybe there’s a general misanthropy about his work that I don’t like, as Danto suggests.
Here are two more things I don’t really care for that everyone else seems to like:
1. stuffed grape leaves
2. Cat Power
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:59 am
I don’t like grape leaves… but I DO like Chuck Close.
January 23rd, 2006 at 2:34 am
I like that early black and white self-portrait he did with the cigarette dangling from his lips; he looks bad-ass.
There are also things I like about Pearlstein.
So why did I say “dubious”? ‘Cause that’s the type of stuff you put in blogs to stir things up.
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:32 pm
We will work on the Cat Power thing. I’m not cool with grape leaves either.
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:39 pm
I realize after reading this that I only like art that either looks cool or is funny. I’m completely unsophisticated.
Those early Chuck Closes, where he just blew them up without the pixel-refraction shit, I think are hilarious. His source photos are really extremely hideous and from an era of the least flattering fashions. And he painted them over and over for ten years. Man, if I was his friend who had to see my really unflattering 70s snapshot blown up to wall-sized multiple times, I’d be hella pissed.
January 23rd, 2006 at 11:45 pm
Ah…the Artworld. The only thing I don’t like about art is the only thing holding it together. Oh well.
January 25th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Hey Mitch,
One way to take Naumann’s misanthropy is as a desire to provoke his audience into participation that maybe ain’t so bad. Here’s what philosopher Paul Goodman said in 1950 about the “Advanced-Guard” writer:
“His audience and his relation to his audience are his essential plastic medium…throughout there is the attractive and repulsive tampering of the artist and the audience with each other.”
That feels like Naumann to me, anyway it’s what I like about him when I feel the work is “working.” In this sense, a Naumann piece is sort of set up precisely NOT to be admired but to be contested or “tangled with.”
I realize that this exact rational can be used to prop up work that just plain sucks, but I don’t think Naumann just plain sucks — though how we draw THAT distinction is tricky indeed. I think it has something to do with our sense of whether the artist is a provocateur or just a run-of-the-mill opportunist…
January 26th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
I don’t think his work sucks at all—his stuff is really good. And he’s definitely not an opportunist. And, really, his work is too opaque to consider him a “provocateur.”
In fact, the whole artist-as–provocateur paradigm is a bit overplayed, I think. I just don’t know any artists that set out simply to provoke an audience; that would be a miserable way to spend your time. Most artists like to think of their audience as sympathetic to their project. Sometimes it comes as a shock when you realize that people aren’t sympathetic to what you’re doing.
There are some great historical examples—Manet went to his grave wondering why so much outrage and repulsion surrounded his work when all he wanted was acceptance in the Paris Salon. Matisse, labeled a “wild beast” by the French press, wanted his art to be like a comfy chair for the businessman.
I think what happens is that when an artist with a radically new sensibility, with a new set of criteria for what art should be or do, presents this art to a public that lacks this sensibility or set of criteria, the audience automatically thinks they’re being provoked because they don’t “get it.”
Actually, often work that purposely sets out to be provocative, say a Salvador Dalí or a Barbara Kruger, is the stuff that gets quickly embraced by a mass audience, probably because in the public’s mind, this is what “avant-guard” art is supposed to be about, they understand “provocative.”
So with Nauman, it’s not a question of good or bad—he’s obviously top-notch—but a question of sensibility. And I guess his sensibility rubs me the wrong way (a little). It’s a very American sensibility—the irascible, rugged individualist, wary of strangers, skeptical of all things intangible and transcendent.
Although when I saw that huge neon “live and die” piece at the Art Institute of Chicago, I was blown away.