This started off as a nit-picking post, then I
decided I actually had a serious post.
In the New Republic, Lee Siegel
writes a long article about Larry David. He doesnt much like him, or at least
his show, because hes destroying comedy and comedy is important because its
all we civilised beings have left. As he says
There has been a
lot of handwringing during the past thirty years over the way mainstream
culture has appropriated the adversarial energies of the avant-garde. But comedy was a last bastion of lucid
insanity: long after Rothko sold paintings to the Four Seasons, Lenny Bruce was
still manically holding forth on stage. With Curb Your Enthusiasm, however,
comedy’s citadel of genuine opposition has finally been overrun, and the
hilarious barbarians have been driven out by the uptight hordes.
Nitpicking point. Rothko didnt sell paintings to
the Four Seasons. He was commissioned to produce paintings for them, and in
fact did produce some literally breathtaking pieces, but he returned the
commission. Why? Well, according to this
account in the Guardian by Jonathan Jones, his original intent was
to ruin the
appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room,
with paintings
that will make those rich bastards feel that they are trapped in a room where
all the doors and windows are bricked up.
It seems after actually eating at the Four Seasons Rothko
decided this wasnt going to happen. As Jones puts it
[N]o artist in
New York in 1959 had that kind of power. Sitting amid the buzz and excess of
the Four Seasons, Rothko must have felt that he had been deluded – that the
wealthy diners were not going to be harrowed. That art could not change
anything. That his paintings would just be decoration after all.
Well, Siegel just made a mistake then, it was just
a bad example, expressionist art is all over the corporate world so he could
have picked anything. Maybe, but maybe not. Just because expressionist art is
no longer a bastion of lucid insanity, it doesnt mean art itself isnt. Expressionism
as such ceased being radical long ago. Victory
Boogie Woogie didnt become a mainstream work when the Dutch government
paid $40 million for it, it was designed as a mainstream work, a tribute to
America and that that entails. (I think its one of the most flattering things
ever said about America, but thats an issue for another day.)
But that doesnt mean art stopped being
oppositional. You dont see expensive restaurants lining up to purchase Francis
Bacon artworks, to pick a not so random example. Nor Damien Hirst. Nor
Tracey
Emin, though shes doing all she can to mainstream herself. Nor even such relatively
unthreatening artists as Gilbert
and George. The mainstream may be taking over lots of things, but even if
comedy falls (and how one show on HBO could be its downfall is a little beyond
me) theres plenty of adversarial energy left in the old avant-garde.