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.

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…

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.

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.