I feel like I understand the “art world” after reading this book. At least some more of it anyways. Wolfe takes satirical, humorous, and critical aim at “modern art” and gives a quick and enjoyable re-telling of the history of 20th century art. Originally published in 1975 Wolfe’s re-telling ends just before I was born. I’d love to know what Tom sees in the art world of 2011, but for accurate historical perspective, we might have to wait another 30 years to find out what’s happening right now.

What is so valuable about Wolfe’s view on art is that he lampoons the ever so serious world of art, artists, dealers, magazine covers, and all the rest of it, and he does so with knowledge. I could tell that he really enjoys art, and this wasn’t just a target for his humor. He explains the early decades of 20th century art as simply edging towards “flatness”. From abstract expressionism to action painting, to pop art and op art and then finally pure conceptual-ism, each stage moved further away from the roots of realism and illusion and depth in painting towards the “holy grail” of a perfectly flat art, the kind that could exist on a piece of paper, like a typed word… a painted word.

The “joke”, that “thing” that the in crowd “got” about modern art, had nothing to do with how it looked, it was completely the theory behind it. Wolfe makes the point that if MOMA were to do a retrospective on 20th century art that it would just be massive reproductions of the articles written about the paintings, with, maybe, a small thumbnail of the paintings, just to show that the theories were real, as in they did produce more then the flat words on paper part.

The pattern is that each new “wave” trashes the last wave, everyone involved working so hard to figure out the next “big thing”, who can come up with the most complex non-understandable, “thing” that nobody else can “get” so we can all feel special in that nobody gets what we’re doing because we tried so hard to make it impossible and impenetrable. It’s sad to think that so much of art can be explained by such a childish race towards expendable fashion trends.

I’m sure many of the writers of the theories and the artists of the art were genuinely engaged and cared about what they were doing… but was Pollack really that great? was there no one else? right time, right place, right stuff? Someone like Norman Rockwell, whose painting is on the cover of the book, or Andrew Wyeth, ignored by “the art world”, were they really that bad? or just not following the trends. Nothing agitates the cool kids more then someone that doesn’t care to be a part of their clique.

Towards the end of the book Wolfe makes the point that this move towards “flatness” and pure theory was also a move away from the personal, and the evocative, pop art being the most obvious example of “art” that had nothing to say about the maker or to the viewer. And I wonder… where did this terrible fear of personalized art come from? why is it so taboo to be evocative in your art? how did any level of realism become the worst mistake. Even when realism does come back, it comes back as photo-realism, bland scenes of nothing in particular created in a purely technical fashion.

Is painting a pretty vase of flowers the most radical thing possible these days? …only if you could also write several hundred books about how amazing it all was.