In his column for US News and World Report this week, entitled "But Where's the Art?," social critic and author John Leo laments the movement of the nation's leading art museums toward displaying exhibits on such pop culture topics as motorcycles and guitars. Singled out for particular ridicule were the exhibits Dangerous Curves: Art of the Guitar at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and The Art of the Motorcycle at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
The MFA, heaven forbid, even went so far as to promote Dangerous Curves in area taverns. Quoted in an interview with the Boston Herald, MFA public relations coordinator David Strauss stated, "That's the constituency we're looking for (for this exhibit), the people who may go to bars and trendy restaurants."
While this is anathema to the cognoscenti, it would appear that the hoi polloi aren't paying much attention. They are having a wonderful time attending these shows. It has been reported that The Art of the Motorcycle is the most successful show in the history of the Guggenheim Museum.
What is the root cause of this supposed decline in Western Civilization?
According to Leo, "Part of the problem is that curators are afraid of straying too far from current popular tastes. The writer Heather MacDonald calls this u2018cringing curatorial populism.' This fear of quality has roots in ideology as well as in mass marketing. The current generation of museum curators, mostly reared in the 1960s ethic of opposition to authority and tradition, bought into the postmodern idea that art museums have been part of the stuffy, elitist, Eurocentric power structure that must be overthrown. According to postmodern theory, artistic judgment is a mask for power: There are no masterpieces, and even quality is suspect. If the problem is that aesthetic standards have been imposed from above, the solution must be to heed the judgments of ordinary citizens–in other words, to elevate pop culture. u2018When standards become relative, everything becomes art,' Lynne Munson writes in her new book, Exhibitionism, u2018and politics (or any other nonart priority) is left free to guide the mission of museums.'"
This could be a partial explanation, particularly the reference to aesthetic relativism, but I don't believe that it tells the complete story. No one in the general public is fooled by the Guggenheim museum into believing that an Arlen Ness or a Paul Yaffe is a Cézanne or a Tintoretto. The general populace knows the difference between fine art and industrial design. However, they also know the difference between art of any sort and trash, and given the track record of many of America's art institutions of late, the public is letting their voice be heard on which they would prefer to see.
It really isn't much of a surprise, given the choice between elephant dung blasphemy, urine-soaked blasphemy, or the Chapman brothers creations, such as Zygotic acceleration, biogenetic, de-sublimated libidinal model (enlarged x 1000), which is "comprised of 21 child-sized mannequins wearing identical running shoes and standing in a circle. Some have penises where their noses should be, some have anuses in lieu of mouths, and vaginas meld the ring of bodies together." that a whole lot of very fine folks might say, "Show me the Harley-Davidsons!"
The fine arts community has no one but themselves to blame for the current state of affairs. The further they have strayed down the path of cynicism and decadence, the more people have found them to be irrelevant. The problem isn't Heather MacDonald's "cringing curatorial populism" rather it is the art community's decision to elevate garbage to the level of fine art.
If Andres Serrano is an "artist," then I know some fellas building websites in a few San Fernando Valley industrial parks that really need to start getting their business cards out in some different circles. Hey, Andres, you want art? Well, check this out!
Now, before anybody out there takes to calling me some sort of backwater hick with no appreciation for the arts, I should go on the record as stating that I was well into pursuing a B.F.A. in photography at one time, and studied under the likes of well-known art photographer Les Krims. Of course, this was before I realized that I wanted to get a real job doing something useful with my life, but that's a different story. You can trust me, however, with experience like this I know bullshit when I see it.
At one time back in the 1970's, Les Krims created a series of Polaroid photos of his naked mother shooting laser beams out of her eyes at G.I Joe figurines. While I am sure that this would present plenty of fodder for a psychological study, it was hardly "high art." In fact, even to Les it seemed more of an inside joke, the kind of smirking humor that the cognoscenti share when they think they have one over on the proles.
This derisive attitude may all be well and good when your audience is comprised of fellow nihilists, but it doesn't sell very well to Joe Bagadonuts. In fact, as hard as this is for most of the art crowd to believe, more than a few educated Americans would find Les' photos of mom in her altogether zapping G.I. Joe to be rather distasteful. Instead of "Les, what brilliant insight, what an original use of the medium," most normal folks would say, "Les, you're creeping me out here."
Which brings me back around to Leo's contention that the problem is museum curators heeding the "judgments of ordinary citizens," and elevating pop culture to the status of fine art. Ordinary citizens do not find the work of Jake and Dinos Chapman, Damien Hirst, and Andres Serrano to be fine art. In fact, most would probably find it stupid at best, and more likely than not, disgusting.
Let's face it, to the average guy, if Hirst's maggot-infested rotting bull's skull is art, if Serrano's image of a crucifix in a jar of urine is art, than a Yamaha GTS 1000 motorcycle, or a D'Angelico New Yorker arch-top guitar has damn well got to be art, right?
I know I'd have one helluva time trying to argue with that.
Finally, the challenge to Mr. Leo would be; are the "ordinary citizens" he refers to responsible for dragging our art culture down, or are they trying their best to drag it up, back out of the gutter that the art establishment has voluntarily thrown it in?
May 10, 2001
