Modern Art: Kimball and Kramer

Dr Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer of the New Criterion stand against the tide of pomposity, self-importance and political correctness that has flooded the art world. The works of Marcel Duchamp, Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon, Damien Hurst or Andy Warhol and others are ruthlessly exposed and unsparingly criticised , as are the many pretentious exhibitions that show works of a highly transcient nature - e.g., Hurst's pile of cans, ashtrays etc. The latter is the work that was cleared away for the night cleaner at the gallery, because he, understandably, mistook it for a pile of rubbish. The aesthetic values of the cleaner are to be admired.

Kimball and Kramer call us to hold onto the values of beauty, truth abd glory that have shaped western art for centuries against the landslide into the dark, ugly and disfigured world of modern art. They tell us that there is plenty of good about, but it is not shown and harder to locate.

Modern art has become the engine for the bleets and cries of the politically correct crowd. Every work is viewed in terms of what it illuminates as to women's issues, sexual orientation, gender concerns, race and so forth. These pet concerns become the prism for every artistic interpretation, and the measure for the selection and valuation of newer pieces.

The language of modern art criticism is contorted, pretentious and deliberately opake.

But on the subject of modern, great art look at the wonderful works of the american artist, Jacob Collins at http://www.jacobcollinspaintings.com/.

Finally, in the essay, Tradition and the Individual Talent, T S Eliot located the root of the problem, where he criticised

our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects or parts of his work we pretend to find what is individual, what is the particular essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas, if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find 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. (quoted in Roger Kimball, Art's Prospect p, ix)