.

CHAPTER

WHO RULES THE ART WORLD?

A little over a decade ago, the art press announced a new trend
in modern painting, photorealism. All of the artists involved
used photographic images at some point in their work pro
cess. At the time, most high-art galleries were showing totally
abstract or conceptual works. It was therefore startling to see
work that thrust tpon us highly resolved images of the mod
ern world. One work in particular caught my attention. It de
picted a family of four on a Florida beach. The group looked

like the kind of all-American families in contemporary Won

der Bread ads, except that the image had the feel of

posed

snapshot in which everyone self-consciously tried to look

their role as a member of a happy, fun-loving family. Thus the
father-a Dick Nixon look-alike-grins too much as he plays
with his son's toy car, while his wife overindicates her amuse
ment. The-.york's cool; detached surface, clean-edged forms,
and bright colors magnified the emptiness of the family cliche
tha the figures act out.
"'-, A couple of years later, I was introduced to the artist. I
told him how much I liked his work. He was, of course,
pleased. Then I made the mistake of saying more-something
about his deadpan way of presenting such an uncomfortable
image. The moment I mentioned the image, he had a fit. His
painting, he insisted, was not abollt the cliche of the family
nor anything else "in" the im:lge. It was solely about the
painted surface as an arr:lngement of color and form

He

himself W:lS totally indifferent to the content of the photos

he used for his paintings and selected them only on the basis
of thcir color and! composition. In other words, his work was
exclusively "about" art-art as it was thell defined by the
This essay was first publisht'd in SNi"list Rrl.iell' 13 (July-August 19R3).
99-119. It is reprintcd here by permission of the Ccntcr for Social nescarch
and Education.

I I

dominant high-arc-world critics. I did not try to argue with

CIIAPTEH II

him. The need to assert a critically validated artistic intention

is not unusual among professional high artists. Nor is the

desperation.

Arts Maazine, October,

and also a growing number of mediators who explain.

Art in America,

and a few others. Occasionally. this

criticism also appears in exhibition catalogues, anthologies.

important should be noted: most of this criticism promotes

very modern art that is not understood. liked. or even seen
by most people. Which is also to say that very few people
read serious art criticism. Conversely. the kind of art that is
most often made and bought-the art you see in modest
.

galleries or even street fairs-is never the subject of serious

art criticism. Most people get along with art or som:ting
they consider art on their own terms without the slightest
help from high-art criticism.
Yet. judging from the amount produced annually, art crit
icism is a necessary component of the high-art world. And
art critics appear to have enormous power within that world.
especially in the eyes of artists. What then is the power of art
criticism? What does it do and for whom does it do it? In
what follows. I want to explore these and other questions.
Above all. I am interested in the role criticism plays in reg
ulating the social relations of the art world. how it mediates
both the production and use of high art.
The people who consume art criticism-those who buy
the art magazines and attend lectures and panels on criti
cism-are usually directly involved in the production of high

art. They are members of the high-art world. That world

can be described in many ways-as a magnet for creative
talent, an elitist enclave. a zone of personal freedom. a com
munity of the alienated. Whatever else it is. however. the
modern world of high art is an international market centered
in New York City and emanating out to rival centers in Paris.

London. Milan. Tokyo. and the other great centers of cap

italism. Like any market. it is organized around the produc

tion and use of commodities. in this case luxury objects

produced by small manufacturers.

In between the artist-producers and their buyers arc layers

of middlemen and women providing various services: sales
people. critics, consultants. museum personnel. art teachers.

170

and curate exhibitions. Since photography has now become

high art in a big way. the market includes increasing numbers

and other publications. At the outset something obvious but

art school. Art-history professors sometimes write criticism

icism I mean the criticism of high art that appears in the most

prestigious art-world magazines-Arifornm,

plains. promotes. and displays art work and also recruits and
trains new personnel. Many people do more than one thing;

for example. they may produce work and also teach in an

Art criticism is one of the subjects of this essay. By art crit

and professors. This :lrJny of proft'ssionals cbssifics. cx-

II

II

of photographercartists and buyers of high photography,

teach. and so on. Together. these people form the network

of social relations within which art is produced and its usc

determined.

Artists make works. but they do not make art in the SOcial
sense. Their work becomes art only when it is made visible
within an art context. In fact. people everywhere make things
they regard as art. What they make at home may even look
like art to their friends and neighbors. But most of these
people arc artists only within the limits of their immediate

communities. The New York high-art world is no local com

munity among other art communities. It is the most socially
visible art community and. at present. the summit art com
munity in the Western world. It appears as a set of spaces set
apart for the display of high-art products. The most notice
able of these spaces arc the prestigious big-city museums.
The Museum of Modern Art. the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. the Guggenheim, nd the Whitney are perhaps the su
preme spces of the high-art world. Here. the public may sec
work that is considered the most authentic. achieved. and
authoritative high art. Works shown in these spaces validate
other works like them shown elsewhere.

Radiating oUlt from these centers is a sprawling network

of supporting high-art spaces that reinforce the authority of
the great museums-a handful of "important" commercial

galleries; some private collections. watched by market insi

ders: small or university museums with an eye for new art
trends; and a host of lesser. fringe. and so-called "alternative"
spaces. Some of these function as launching stages from

which new work can be catapulted into the higher reaches

of the market. although most of the smaller museums arc
content to follow the lead of the centers.

The majority of people who make art never come ncar any

of these spaces. at least not as art suppliers. Others prefer or

are kept in the fringe spaces. many of which arc funded by
the state or by corporate money and sometimes allow a

II

WHO RUI.1'.
THE A RT W

..

C H A PT F. R I I

-..

greater margin of personal freedom and experimentation than

the centns.

In orJer to become visible in this world. an rtist l1lust

make work th;tt in some way addresses the high-art COIll

munity or some se ment of it. I am. of course. assuming 3n

art sc 001 or art department-trained individual. someone
whose notion of artistic labor has alrcady been shaped with
all orientation toward the high-art market. There arc. in the
New York area alone. thousands of such people-painters.
sculptors. photographers. printl11akers. art performers. and
others-competing with each other to become visible in this
market. There arc as many more who live elsewhere. often
ill university towns where they teach art or arc married to
those who teach. Together. all of these people make hundreds
of thousanJs of works that are intelligible as art to only a
hndflll of buyers. critics. dl'alers. and curators. This glut of

'

--

Good critics validate work as high art by publicly testifying

that it has art quality for them. They put into words their.!
expericllce of a work. identifyillg the ideas and feelings the
work evokes ill ,them and describillg the specific way thc

artist produces that effect. Critics thus demonstrate that the

work has some transcendent meaning to thcm. that it gives

shape to or illuminates some feeling, value. or truth that they

hold to be significant. and that it does so in a form that seems
appropriate. The quality of the critic's work call be morc or .
less tested in the looking: either you sec and value the meaning
he or she points to or you dont. In this way critics, together

with dealers and curators. create an Jrt context for work.

They surround Ht with mediJting discourse and ::dso with a

work becol11es high art whcn someone with authority in that

the market value of a work. When he successfully commu

the work is exhibited in a high-art space. it is noticed in the

high-art press. or it is purchased by a high-art collector. The
most splendid demonstration that the high-art world values
an artist's work is when an important museum buys a chunk
of it and hangs it up for everyone to sec. Dut before this
happens. artists usually must collect vllidation over a period

and therefore value in the eyes of others. The critic thus helps
build the artist's reputation anJ also gives that reputation
specific content. In the process the work absorbs value cre:;lted
b the critic's labor. In practice. then. the aest,lxetic and the
.
.
economic v
nt. Decause of this. critics-whcn they are not being courted by
artists-are often looked upon with resentment and are es
pecially open to charges of collusion and self-interest (many
of them also have sizable art collections). These charges arc

world treats it as art. This happens in essentially three ways:

of time in the other ways. Visibility normally begins when

a recognized high-art dealer or a curator in one of the mu
seums that count includes them in a show or gives them a
one-person show of their own. I3y doing so. the dealer dem
onstrates publicly tht the artist's work has art quality for

, him or her. When dealers or curators exhibit work. they arc

staking their professional judgments and reputations on it. If

the work is validated elsewhere or finds a buyer. the exhibitor
maintains or even gains in validating power.
Finally. the work becomes high art when a critic treats it

as such in the high-art press or in some other public forum.

nut getting critics' attention. let alone favorable attention

from an able critic. does not follow autonutically from get

ting exhibited. although an exhibition usually provides critics

with the occasion to write about an artist. Much depends
upon where one is exhibited. Only a handful of "in" g:llleries
on

assume that their shows will be noticed. Of course. a

one-person show in a big museum-the ultimate recogni-

TilE ART

artists get such shows. they h3ve already achieved significant

visibility in the market.

3rt :lI1d artists is the normal condition of the art markl't.

Artists makc works. but they do not have the power to

make their work visible as art in the high-art world. Their

WHO RUI F'

tion-is sure to produce critical resporlse. nut by the time

physical context that prompts its reading as art.

By testifying to a work's art value. the critic also augments

nicates his own I!'xperience of the work. he gives it meaning

1\

often well deserved. but most critics do not have the auton
omous power artists attribute to them. As we shall see. what

ever power they wield is ultimately limited by the buyer's

needs.
Nevertheless. criticism plays a crucial role. Criticism sorts.
labels. and measures the worth of artists. ranking them in
relation to each other within one of the ever-shifting trends
'
that waft through the market: pop. figurative, abstract lyr

lClsm.

minimal.

neorealism.

conceptual.

performance.

pattern-painting. punk. new wave, neoexpressionism. and so

on. At the same time. individual critics make their own bids
for attention by championing or inventing one or more of
thcse often transient art trends. Whether or not they like it
or want to admit it. most professional artists arc forced to
keep an eye on the market. They know what trends arc cur-

173

IV

C:I!APTEfl

I I

n:I1t1y receiving critiol support. They kllow who is showillg

ill what gJlkry, who h:ls a retrospective :lt the Whitney, who
is Oil this month's cover of wh:lt magazine, who got reviewed

on the inside and how mJny lines of print they got. They

kllOw who is selling for what Jt auction. Since art-school

dJYs, artists learn thJt recognition meanS becoming visible
in these contexts. and l1lal1Y artists measure their own v:llue

according to how much of this visibility they achieve. Central

to their career objectives is the fJct that they must compete

with each other through their work even as they seck from
ech other the companionship and support of fellow pro
fessiollJls.
C riticism thus gU:lrds the door to all available high-Jrt
sp:lces, sets the terms for entry, scouts the fringe spaces for

0/

Individual critics feel thcmselves to be 110 more powerful

th:1I1 artists. Most of them are enthusiasts of modern art trying
to bring to public attention the :lrt they admire. They arc no
more biased toward their friends thall artists :Ire. And th,'y

are:ls likeIY;]$ ;]rtists to complain :lbOllt the nHlseul11-galkry

publishing est:lblishment th;]t adv:lnces only "safe" or pre

tested art. Many dealers tdl thc same story: they can't afford

is hardly a conSCIously organized conspiracy. There arc only

Qnc in partIcular.

That perception is fairly close to the truth. The art world

individual people, acting in the belief that they are doing

force in the high-art market is not in any individual critic,

curator, or dealer but in criticism itsdf. And criticism is

tradition-learned in art school-that shapes the views of

cverywhcre-in the judgments of dealers, curators, :lnd crit

idatc thcir own work. Thcir testimony is considered bIased

by their illtcrests as produccrs in a highly competitive markct.

professors, and in the decisions of art editors. C riticism is

the all-pcrvasivc force th:lt makes possible and unifies the
'
market system. Its influencc is fclt from the moment of pro

critics, curators, and publishers. Howcver, artists cannot val

Critical writings by artists or exhibitions curatcd by them do

not have thc same market clout as regular criticism and ex

hibitions, cven though some artists talk about their own and

ics, in thc art strategies of a rtists, in the lecturcs of art-history

duction, in the minds of artists, and continuously thereafter

the art world's form of quality control.

thc artist doesn't sce. The artist may think her work refers
to her experience as a mother or a lover or to some philo

Quality is a word often used in a rt-world discussions about

critic. Thc critic may discover or emphasize meanings that

art. Or, morc prccisely, it is a word that usually ends dis

sophical idca. Thc critic may talk only about how the work

cussion. That is because quality, although understood.1s the

artist for communicating something about nature or femalc

experience. while the artist may declare that her aim is only

undefinable and universal essence. l3ut quality in art work is

uses color or materials. Conversely, the critic may praise the

to explore spatial relationships or the qualitics of paint. Gen

erally, artists learn to speak of their work in acccpted critical
terms. If you p:lint figurcs when figure painting is Otlt, you
may very well find more to say about your usc of color or
the surfacc play of form th:m about the human beings YOll

when the work is seen by its high-art audiencc. Criticism is

others' work with morc insight and intelligcnce than thc

something good: advancing the causc of art. The controlling

Artists practice criticism as much as critics. Their ideas about

bill' s they wtch others tke away frol11 thcl11selves portions

of the limited alLail:1ble critical attention.

and usc. C riticism can decide which of maDY possjble mean.

ings a w rk will have and can su
re

what is possible and good in :lrt arc shaped by the same

v:llidtiol1 process in prillciple and wish only that the critical

winds woulJ blow their way. Me:lnwhik, they l11kL' the
roullus of the deakrs, invite critics to their lofts, nd e:lt their

to show what thcy'd likc because it won't get rcvicwed in

the :lrt press. And on it goes. veryone feels plight tip in a
"system" whosc comrolling powcr is everywhere but in no

erienced in the present.

!:.ast wor s are seen and exp

T III' A 1('1'

is whether or 1101: her work is 110ticed. Most :lrtists accept the

new talent, alld tirelessly readjusts current criteria to emer

gent art modes. C riticism is the mediating veil in all art
world transactions. It is the alchemy, the invisible, seemingly
magic wJnd that converts potentiJl art into the real thing. It
mediates not only the buyillg of art, but also its production

Wl10 HU I I

Jlpict. It is. howevl'r. irrelev.1llt whetltl'r or Ilot Il artist

grel's with what a critic says about her work. Wh:lt I1l:ltters

ultimate basis of all critical judgments, is thought to bc an

no differcnt from quality in any other man- or woman-made

object. Thc quality of labor in anything is that which gives:

it its specific usc. Art, like other things, embodies quality fo

someone whcn it meets his or hcr wants-to be entertained,

moved, flattcrcd, cnlightened, ch:lrmed, awed, or any of thc
other things people valuc in art. We may value a work because

II

'7

\\

we find its colors pleasing, or because it reminds us of our

CHAPTER II

We may buy a work because we think it will enh:mce our

social standing or because it gives us back a piece of our

high-art world, they must :llso demonstrate sufficient

amounts of "purely artistic" intentionality or keep the life
experience very personal, "universal," or ambiguous. Or
they must build into their work certain strategies: critical
bypasses arollilld the "non-art" content or clever "aesthetic"

a work simply because we admire the artist's skill in rendering

textures or flesh.

Modern high art can do all of these and many other things.

But to have the quality of high art, it must also do something

else. This something else gives it its usc-value as high art.

What then constitutes quality in modern high art; what is
its use? And to whose needs is this use addressed? The main

resolutions in which the art part subsumes the rest. Claus

Oldenberg, Andy Warhol, Hans Haacke, and George Segal

usc to which modern high art is put is ideological. This use

can best be seen in the high-art world's supreme space, the
museum. In the museum high art is most fully used as high
art. It is in the museum that we see works that have been
given the highest validation and have abr__e..m.9.st crit

are some of the artists who, in very different ways, have

figured out how to pay the art world's price of admissioll
and also manage to comment :lbout life beyond the art

world-although not all their work may communicate in that

world beyond, especially when the artist's struggle to say
something thrc:>ugh the barrier of high-art form is part of the
work's content. Of course, there are artists who look at the
world very critically and make that vision highly accessible

ical labor. There, each work, reverently isolated and carefully

illuminated, is made to stand as a moment of artistic freedom,
a freedom evidenced in the artist's capacity for innovation
and uniqueness. Numerous mediators have explicated, doc

freedom is conceived as individual freedom. Modernist

works, as celebrated instances of freedom, thus function as

icons of individualism, objects that silently turn the abstrac

tions of liberal ideology into visible and concrete experience.
In the art market, then, artistic innovation and uniqueness
are the coin of the realm. Professional artists, competing with
each other for limited high-art space, know very well that

I they must call attention in their work to the uni ueness of

their own artistic a or i their work is to have market value.

\ But uniqueness only regIsters when It appears in accepted art

world forms. Thus artists must signal their intentionality to

make modern high art by addressing the viewer in one or
another of the validated high-art modes that criticism de-

in their work. lLCon Golub is p robably the best example. Such

umented, and personally testified to those qualities. Articles,

books, exhibition catalogues, and films demonstrate the for
mal inventiveness of this or that artist, his special iconogra
phy, his distinctive use of symbols, textures, or materials,
the risks he took, and the sacrifices he made in achieving

freedom is cherished and protected-since, in our society, :\11

WHO RUt
TilE AR

their beliefs, ideas, and experit'1Jces :IS hU1l1:1n beings beyond

the art world. But if they want to say those things in the

experience in the world in a heightened form. We may like

mallds. They must declare themselves high artists first and

last. Which docs not mean thJt they cannot also say other
things. Indeed, some artists are very intent upon expressing'

childhood home, or makes us feel tension or joy or surprise.

these qualities. Innovation and uniqueness are ideologically

useful because they demonstrate the artist's individual free
dom as an artist; and that freedom comes to stand for human
freedom in general. By celebrating artistic freedom, artworld institutions "prove" that ours is a society in which all

artists get respect from other artists and critics, but the non-

art part of their work is too violent, r:lW, or politically up

tlK-j

setting to sit easily in accepted critical categories or in the

cool, "universII" spaces of the high-art world, and their work

is not well known, even within the art world. In general,
more yo.u want to 'communicate to the outside world, the
ess likely your work will be seen 5y a larger public. CritiCIsm, always on the lookout for what is ideologically useful,
demands not simply innovation and uniqueness but artistic
innovation and! uniqueness, and it wants those qualities to
stand out over and above the other possible readings of a

J
"

work. Still, in some sections of the art world, liberal and

even left-wing sentiments an: not unwelcome-another

proof that freedom is honored. But if those other meanings
are too intrusive or specific, the work c:lnnot be useful. To
h:lvc the quality of high art, the work must, :lbove all, force
fully demonstrate the artist's individual artistic inventiveness. !
The work must remind us that how it's said is ultimately;
more significant than what is said.
The state has learned to understand very well this meaning

of modern art. A few years ago, Eva Cockcroft documented

the use of modernist art by the State Department, which,

using the Museum of Modern Art as a front, secretly funded

177

CltAI'TEJ{ It

ovcrscas l'xhibitions of Abstract Expres s ionism in order to

c.:1110-

t iol1a lltt ach t llc l1 t. l11d 1110ralll1d political Jctiol1. Eit;htl'l'llth

bow 13m Shahn has beL'n used to the same end.' It is, I be li c.:v e.

a d d res s t'd you not simply lS In individual but as an individual

t hrivcs and is honorcd.,' More rccently, Francis Pobl c.:xp lorcd

and llil1ctccnth-n'ntury lrt- ! )avid. Gricault,

ulti t n atcly for thc same reasons that both corporate and st;'lte

citizc.:n (alt ho ug h m ost peoplc

funds support some of the more adventurous fringe and al

tt'rnatiYe spacc.:s in the;'lrt world. At present, three New York

banks, i ncludin g the Chase M:lI1hattan. arc funding a sc.:ric.:s

of insulbtiolls in their lobbies. At least one of these instal
Ialions (by Mimi Smith ) is intention ally critical of modern

c apitalism . The bank of fi cers may or may not notice its COIl

tCllt-thl' clltire affair was arr ang ed by an art-world mc.:dia

tor. In any Clse. the work' s critical content will come L'ncasc d
in a rcco g niza ble art envelopc. and th at installation. likc tht'
othns. will demonstrate the bank's support of artistic free

dom and. by implication.

frecdom in gener:ll.' Wishing

wcrc not).

Delacroix

J Illcnl bcr of a social

and pol it ical c0 ll1 n1 l1nity with a historical past that t;ave

meanin g to the present. The history of modc.:rn art. as con

structed in 1l1l1Sell1l1S. cbssroollls. and textbooks. is a history

in which thi s e arlier bourge ois concept of individualism

shrinks to an i dc.:a of the pri v:lte self. while its corollary no

tions of the cxtcrnal world an" pi t'ce by picce. reje cted as a

realm of val ul' . The herocs of l1lodcrn art ncgated t he COlll
nlon cxperic llce of t h is world and found within themselves
a new s u bj t, ctive world which th cy s i m ultaneol lsly invl'ntl'd
and exp lored.

<

Little by little. thcy rid t he ir art of nlrrltive,

illusionism, reprl:sentation, and. finally. of the picture frame

to appear modern in thc Western sense, the Shah of Iran set

itsclf. III pbce of t hes e traditional visllll convention s. they

p erson ne l.

'a h d " b reak.-t hrou ghs." the lea ps to ever greater purity. ab

up a m ode rn museum ill Tchran bcfo rc he was ousted-a

museum stuffed with American art and staffed by American

created new forms to evoke an increasingl y pure :lnd subjec

.
tive rellm. These innovations :ircthC-..s3crmCCS ..... ri sK s. .

Modernist art thus constitutes the official art of libeDl

straction . lnd ihner depth that critical-schobrly writ i ng

to others. Accompanying this art is an official history of

of modernism. Art lnd discourse in the nineteenth century

Western states and also o f states wishing to appear as such

modern art and also a force of credentialed art historians

whose job it is to pre ach. revise. and demollstrate the celltral

truth of that history. In this, the labor of the art historian is
hardl y distinguisha ble from that of the critic. Critics and art

historians train and teach in the same institutions. p u bl i sh in

the same journals. and employ the same critical language as

they r e-sift the art of the past. examine it for its potential
use . and rediscover or redefine its place in art history. Like

the art market itself, art history is always in flux as the de ad

and dyin g artifacts of other eras-works whose origina l

mcaning has faded-arc given new tlse by the living labor

coaches us to sec as the inexorabk mission and lchievement

distorted :lnd idellized the external world lnd celebrated it

as 13elllty. Modern lrt celebrltes lliellJtion from that world

and idealizes it as Freedom.

Art history and criticism thus celebrate the arti st as the ideal

. modern individual. Opposed to and unappn:ciated by the

materialist world and its old -fashioned culture. the modern
artist-antagonist acts out symbolicllly lnd on the cultural
plane the conflict between the individual :111d society. In the
end. he triumphs oyer the world throu gh a vision that tran
scends and leav es bchind its social and n1lterial conditions.

Cezanne. Cubism. Mondrian. Kandinsky. Mire. the Abstract

His is a triumph of t he spirit. Indecd. as he appears in the

literatu re, the modern artist is a combination of .th e ascetic
saint an d the vi rile, daril l g folk hero. His unconventiol\:ll art
bear s witness to both his hL'roic renunciation of the world
and his manly op posit ion to it. In appreciating those qualities.
viewers can live them vicariously.
I am not suggesting that criticism exaggerates the extraor

art history. Traditional. premodern art. whatever else it did.

trary. their work negates the world and its emotional. moral.

of the critic-scholar.

Alan Wallach and I have ex pl ored this official h istory of

art in its most authoritative presentation. the Museum of

Modern Art's permanent collection.' We found that art given

the hig hest

valLIe is art that rcnounces common experience

and t he l anguage and visual modes that evoke that experience.

Expre ssioni sts- these are some of the highlights of modern

affirmed the existence of In external rellity. However much

it distorted or idealized that reality. traditional art acknowl-

edged throl1j,h it the possibilities or biologiol Ill'ed,

convillcc Eu r opc :\Il intdkctuals that in Amc ri ca frccdotll

11 '
.

.'

dinary imagination of the best modern masters. On the con

and politicll possibilities with i tl spire d conviction. They

demonstrate the reality of the subjective realm with an in-

WHO RUt I'

THE ART W

C H A PT E R I I

ven ti veness, a fullness of expression, and an economy of

means seldom matched by other twentieth-century artists.

This holds not only for the heroes of the early twentieth

century-Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, and the others-but

also for the gallery stars of later years-artists such as Rothko,

Johns, Stella, Judd, and Serra. But we must also recognize

that great artists, like star baseball players, appear in the con

text of a system designed to produce and discover them.

Selected from among hundreds of competitors, those who

loneliness and alienation within-modernist art reconciles us

and order. Modernist art redeems the spirit, confirms its ex

istence, and provides a safe place for the exercise of emotions.

But most people dlo not like modern art. Years ago, when I

took my driver's test, the inspector who put me through my

speak of. Nor am I protesting the fact of an art market. I

stops, he complained steadily about modern art. ''I'm not

market, needs that oganize vast amounts of.if!1agina!ive

to me." Indeed, there was nothing stupid about him. But he

l;lbor and spill most of It down the dram 111 order to get

alittle of it to show in a few places for the benefit of a

few people. We can measure the waste not only in the

'thousands of "failed" artists-artists whose market failure

is necessary to the success of the few-but also in the

millions whose creative potential is never touched. Let us

also count the labor of the mediators who conscientiously

police high-art space and maintain its order.

]1 began by saying that the world of high art addresses only

a small segment of the population. It nevertheless plays a
. crucial ideologic1 role since it is his segment that controls
.
.
industry, education, and commUnicatIons. BeSIdes the super
, rich-those who might actually form significant art collec
tions-the high-art audience includes affiuent and educated

professionals, those whose class loyalty and skills arc nec

essary for managing industry and the state and, directly or

indirectly, controlling the classes below them. In modernist

art these people may confirm their social identities as mem
bers, or would-be members, of the privileged few. It is they
who can enjoy the aesthetic detachment and the spiritual ad
venture that modernist art offers. They arc the ones with the
life opportunities and incomes that give substance to mod
ernism's claims of freedom. Above all, it is they who are free
to transcend the conflicts of everyday life. And no other group
is better prepared educationally and by situation to under

stand and respond to the visual cues of modernism. It is to

the elect and the many who identify with it that modern art

delivers its spiritual load. Modernism gives comfort to worn

and troubled minds. Sealed off from the horrors of daily life-

WHO RUUS

THE ART \V(

to modern life by showing us a realm of calm, resolution,

paces asked me what I did for a living. Upon discovering

that I taught art history, he felt compelled to tell me of his
dislike for Picasso, probably the only modern :lrtist he could

am pointing to the nature of the needs that control that

180

the unsettling events on the nightly news, the danger, dis

order, and pollution in the world outside and feelings of

become visible are those whose talents best accord with the

demands of the game.

My point then is not that the wrong "great" artists have
been selected; there is no alternative high-art tradition to

1
\

name. For a good fifteen minutes, while I did Illy turns and

stupid," he kept saying, "but that art doesn't say anything

felt that someone was telling him he

!Vas

stupid by holding

up for his admiration expensive and apparently meaningful

objects he could not comprehend. Students in the state college

where I teach often indicate such resentment-or else they

are full of apology: for not liking modern art.

In his remarkable essay of 1920, "!he I?ehumanizat!on of
Art, " Ortega y Gasset offered a SOCIologIcal explanatIon of
the unpopularity of modern art that still holds. "The new
art," he wrote, "obviously addresses itself not to everybody

.,

\:.1 )
r

...but to a specially gifted minority"-in fact, a minority

of culturally alienated individuals.
When a man dislikes a work of art, but understands it, he feels
" uperior to it; and there is no reason for indignation. I3ut when his
'dislike is due to his failure to undtrstand, he feels vaguely humiliated
and this ranklin scnse of inferiority must be counter-balanccd by
indignant self-assertion.

In effect, the new art reminds "the average citizen" of his

inferiority to the privileged few-an effect that Ortega, a
man of the Right, relished. For him the new art gives the lie
to the ideal of democracy. It tells the masses who they really
are: "inert matter of the historicJI process, a secondary fa'ctor
in the cosmos of spiritual life." UtI[ it also "helps the elite to
recognize themselves and one Jllother in the drab mass of
society and to leam their mission, which eonsists in being
,,
few and holding their own against the many. '

From a historical point of view, there is nothing very ab

normal in the way modern society organizes, limits, and USes

lSI

CH A PTER II

the labor of artists. Throughout history the production of art

and bishops-those who embodied the state-usually got the

shops. With rare exceptions high artists 113ve had little choice

but to labor for the ruling cl3sses of their times. Even when,

as in our society, other classes also usc art, the individual

trained as a high artist is h3rd put to find users beyond the

ruling classes for his specialized products.

We know a lot about how the great patrons of the past

communicated their needs to artists. Typically, Cosimo dc'
Medici, Louis XIV, and Napoleon closely watched their ar
chitects and artists and, when necessary, directly intervened
in their work. The princes and popes of the Renaissance also
retained advisors, "court hum3nists," or special agents, who
suggsted programs for decorative schemes or scouted po

tential art talent. Colbert, Louis XIV'S First Minister, often

acted as the king's executive art supervisor and also created

the Royal Academy and its 3rt school to ensure the king the
quantity and kind of.art he needed.

In our own century the direct intervention of the patron

is rare except in architecture where the traditional artist

patron relationship is still viable. When it comes to objects

paintings, sculpture, or photography-the old relationship
has been completely tr3nsformed. Patrons who once CO!1l

manded such works directly from the 3rtist now go to the

free market and buy them ready-made and reJdY-l11etliated.
Instead of retaining personal agents, they now endow art

history departments or fund museum exhibitions. Neverthe

less, the patron's needs remain the governing force in high
art production, ::dthough-as mediated by criticism-those
needs now 3ppear as seemingly autonomous art ideologies.
I have stressed thc way the constraints of the art world

form. In fact. much of the monumental art of the past docs

just this. l3ut this is not to say that all art, by definition, is
oppressive. My point is that art is not a closed category with
inherent and fixed qualities, good or bad, liberating or
oppressive.
Nevertheless, there have been artists who significantly op

posed the ruling values and beliefs of their day. Nowhere is

this opposition rrlOre widespread than in nineteenth-century

Paris, the then capital of the Western art market. Artists such
as Manet, Degas, Pissarro, Monet, Van Gogh, and Seurat

stripped their work of received ideas anci created new art

bngu3.ges closer to their own alienated life experience. The

isolation and poverty that some of these men endured is well

known. l3ut their situation was historically abnormal. In most
societies ruling powers know how to attract, organize, and
.. use the best artistic talent. The careers of the Impressionists
. and Post-Impressionists unfolded in a pl'riod of rapid and far
reaching l'(unoll1ic allll social change. Fill3.nce capital was just
ill the process of becol11ing dominant and had not yet karllld
to recognize its particular needs in art. Still, even in the I R7os,
what littk p:ltronage the Itllpressiollists h3.d came from this
emergent group."! l3y 1905 the situation was more norn13.1:
progressive capitalists now understood how they could usc

the unconventional spirit of the avant-garde.' From this,poim

sality. The idea of art as a realm of freedom and universality

doms would be limited by the needs of its adventurous cap

among left critics of that tradition who have their own ver
sions of it. Here, art is often given a liberating mission or

artist. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the hey

day of vanguardism, it seemed easier to beat the system. But

conceived as a moment in which ideology is transcended.

Such ideas, although abundant in philosophy, arc difficult to

were not notably more liberating than those they were dis
placing. As for the liberating power of art, one can argue as
easily that art, far from being liberating, tends to be oppres-! I
sive, that it mystifies and distorts the world in the interests: I,
;
of the few or, like ritual, it objectifies socially dangerous
impulses only to contain them in a harmless and symbolic I

on, the modern art market took shape as a haven for alienated,'

is central not only in the domin::llH liberal tradition, but also

IR2

not significantly transcended either the dominant ideologies

or the established art modes of their time. Those who did
often had the sU'ppOrt of an emerging social class whose values

shape and limit the lives of professional artists only because

high art is so surrounded by claims of freedom and univer

....

had to work for someone. And most working artists have

immediately available, they or their work were shipped in

necessary labor W3S created locally, in royal schools or work

THE

Artist as an abstraction have had to survive within the social

relations of art production. With rare exceptions they have

art and the artists they needed. If the right artists were not
to Persepolis, Athens, Rome, Versailles, or Tehran. Or the

WHO RUI.I

find in historical reality. In history real artists and not The

and art codes has always been controlled by and geared to

.
the needs of those who do control society. Princes, kings,

expatriated, and idealistic talent-but a haven whose free-:

italist supporters, Therein lies the struggle of the moder

the contradictions and ambivalences were always there.

Already in the teens, avant-garde artists made attempts to

,'.RT

\I

C HAPTER r r

.....

control the meaning of their freedom and the use cf their

'i work. They began booby-trapping it. They painted Olltra

i

geous, vulgar, or "low" art subjects intended to repel high

:art audiences, put junk into their work, made things that self

luxury goods. For the most part, their struggle is not so much

against the system but for survival within it. Umble to Challenge the controlling power of the market, most of them seek
.
to convince the market of the value, meaning, and high-art
use of their products.

garde-to the colbge, Futurism, and, above all, the antics of

from established high-art culture. Their opposition-if not

political-is genuinely felt and expressed as an impulse to

Dada. The anti-art objects and events hatched by Duchamp,

negate the idea of "art" itself. And it is this cultural opposition

expensi ve, high-art commodities. Designed as art for artists,

art made for a market controlled by corporate patronage. In

not result

in

much of it was literally destroyed in the using.

But as it turned out, in the modern art world, to break the

rules is to follow them. The avant-garde was already a market

where symbolic acts of freedom, irreverence, or absurdity

one way or another, almost all of the movements of main

stream modernism, including Abstract Expressionism and
Pop, declared themselves against accepted art values. Even

Minimal art, which dominated the museum-gallery estab

lishment in the sixties and seventies, began with an impulse

to negate. Its best practitioners insisted that there was nothing

yesterday's avant-garde art, was a necessary attribute of the

mation of the "humanist" values of Abstract Expressionism.o

Thus, in struggling against their constraints, artists tightened

touted it as an affirrilation of the idea of art itself. They hailed

modern artist, a sign of his or her free, innovative spirit.

the knots. Their own survival interests, their alienation from

traditional culture, and all the needs that made them artists
in the first place dovetailed with the market's appetite for
thrilling and symbolic advcnture. Together, artists, critics,
dealers, and buyers found ways to commodify even artists'

in their work beyond the literal forms themselves-no affir

Accordingly, critics instantly seized upon the new style and

its clean, cool forms as moments of a pure, absolute, and

rebellion against the market. In museums today, we can see

perfectly empty fre(dom. Perhaps nothing better than Minimal documents the contradictions high artists live: the n
cessity imposed by the market to commodify the spirit; the'
artist's impule to protest that commodification; and finally,
.
.
the commolficatlon of that Impulse to protest. But while

erently installed in glass cases like so many strange little ar

iti<;s, Minimal and the other trends like it admitted impotence

Dada objects or replicas of intentionally destroyed ones rev

ID

!V

Dada set out to beat: the system by not producing commo -

tifacts. Many years after Dada, New York artists would

'from the start and mutely handed over the goods.

performance art would recapitulate much the same drama.

There is also a long and interesting adversary tradition in

rediscover similar strategies. Happenings, conceptual and

Relics of these movements, too, can be seen in the museums,

properly displayed as high art. Thus, even when artists have
protested the usc to which high art is put and have built that
protest into their art, their interventions have had only tem
porary or limited effect. For all their vaunted freedom, high
artists, if they arc to be visible as high artists, have little choice
about how their work is used; and that is because, as high
rtists. they Cl1l1ot choose which cbss they will serve.
To be sure, the notion that avant-garde art is inherently

criticism. Since the ,eighteenth century, from Diderot to our

own time, certain writers have set themselves in opposition
to established art practices and the artistic codes they embody.
Most of those critics remembered today championed new or
emergent art styles that were struggling for high-art recQg

nition. Like the artists they advocated, they are portrayed by

art history as antagonist heroes whose judgments history

would bear out. According to that history, their final vin

dication is a matter of aesthetics or taste or some mysterious

oppositional cannot be entirely dismissed. But we must rec

je ne sais quoi

work are not a class struggle between capitalists and a pro

true. Thore, Baudelaire, Zola, Roger Fry, Harold Rosenberg,

ognize that artists' struggles to control the meaning of their

letariat. H!gh artists arc small, independent manufacturers of

that enabled them to divine the genius of this

or that artist or group. This explanation, as far as it goes, is

and the others could s:e qualities and values.in the work of
.

..

WHO RULE S
THE ART WORI

that is endemic in almost all modernist art, including recent

were valued and turned into objects of exchange. From the

beginning, antagonism toward established high art, including

13tH artists are at,o individualists who are often alienated

Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, and the German Dadaists were

. pointedly conceived as art occasions that could

ldestructed, or refused to make objects altogether. I refer, of

course, to the more aggressive anti-art moments of the avant

..-

CHAPTER

I I

certain artists that had no meaning or use for others-in the

definitive reconquest of museum space. An important early

';,vork of the Naturalists, Manet, Cubisrn, -and Abstract

moment in that battle was the opening of the Museum of

Expressionism. They not only picked the winners of future

Modern Art's new building in 1939, followed, after World

art history, they also articulated new art ideologies. But if

War

history vindicated their judgments, it was because ciQminant

panding phase. Alt the same time that modern art conquered

in the museum, it also invaded the art schools and university

art-history departments, the places that train high artists,

high-art mediators and high-art users. These developments,

too, chronicle the growth of capitalism and its rival sectors,

them thus became "universal"-at least for a time.

personified by Morgan, the Rockefellers, the Mellons, and

now IBM, Exxon" Mobil, and the other great patrons who
"give" us high art.
In all of these struggles criticism has fought not against

The history of art criticism, then, is very much a part of

the history of the bourgeoisie. We can see that history in

sharpest detail in France, the international center of art pro
duction in the Western world up until the 1940S. The critic

high art but for control over it, while those whose values it

first appeared there as significant cultural force in the later

promoted struggled for control over other aspects of society.

These various struggles, each necessary to the other, have
been different sides in the same battle. For now as in the past,
high art exists largely at the will and for the use of wealth

eighteenth century, at precisely the moment when the

bourgeoisie was ready to make a decisive bid for state power.
Criticism thus appeared as part of a struggle in which the

emergent bourgeoisie sought to appropriate high art for its

as a means of kec:ping that power in place.

and the point of contention was whose needs academic art

would serve. Increasingly, Salon art found ways to speak to

and for the bourgeoisie, whose growing armies of critics
patrolled its exhibitions and hawked their pamphlets at the
door.

Around the middle of the nineteenth century a second front

The high-art world monopolizes high-:lrt prestige, but it does

not organize all creative la bor. Even within its shifting spaces,
there are pockets of contradiction and fringe areas worth
fighting for-if that's where you are and if you can afford

to choose your compromises. There is also art space outside

its jurisdiction.
. Recently, I saw an exhibition about the Vietnam War
'- consisting mostly of work by Vietnam veterans trained as
artists. The entire event came about because of the deter
mination of its initial organizer, the artist and Vietnam vet
._

10

Richard Strandberg, to find other vet artists and make a col

lective visual statement about their war experience. Rather
than showcasing artists, the exhibition's focus was kept on
the varied and contradictory ways people survived the war
physically, emotionally, and moral1y. Some of the exhibiting

of high art.

At this point, too, the role of the critic as a specialized

artists. mariy of whom are struggling in the market,' were

mediator between producer and user grew into a profession

in its own right. Of the critics I have mentioned here, Roger

reluctant to show these particular works-images of soldiers,

Saigon children. wounded friends, guns and grenades-until

mediator of both modern and older art. J. P. Morgan, when

he ran the Metropolitan Museum, even sent for him to put

meaning of these works was likely to become distorted and

but it anticipated the next major victory of modern art: its

recognized. however, that this exhibition created a context

Fry was the first who made a good living as

full-time

they learned who controlled the show's context and for what
purpose. They understood that in the high-art world the

the museum into shape. The relationship did not last long,

and power-and I would add that it exists for the most part .

own use. For decades the battleground was the Academy,

began opening up, the infant gallery system. At first it was

adjunct to the Academy, an old-fashioned corporate structure
but still the chief source of validation. Eventually, the gallery
would suck validating power away from the Academy. The
decisive moment was the Impressionist boycott of the official
Salon in the 1870S and the coincidental rise of Durand-Ruel
and the other important dealers. From then on, the dominant
social relations of art production would be organized around
a free, competitive market system. The Academy quickly
withered away as a significant institution in the production

by a virtudll flowering of other modern museums and

modern wings in older museums. We are still in that ex

social groups, old or newly arrived,found that art .relevant

to their changing interests, exp<,:rience, and ideological needs.

, And their social power enabled them to shape high culture
in their own image. What pleased, convinced, and moved

Il,

the experience within them exploited in the name of art. They

II

WHO RULI,'
THE ART

\II

in which their needs could appear, not simply as professional

high art ists but as men who l i ved the trauma and pain of

Vietnam in Vietnam, who now want to speak of that expe

rience. and whose means of expression happen to be the visual

a rts. Rare l y call J rtists address us in this way abollt isslles so

central to modern life.

ThJt sllch efforts are rare is not the fault of artists. When

the rest of us not only make new demands on art but also
help create new contexts, ncw channels of distribution . and

ncw modes of support, we shall ha ve art we can usc.

N O TES
I.

Eva Cock croft . " A bstract Expressionism.. Weapon o f the Cold War. "

Artjorum, June 1 974. pp. 3 9-4 1 .

frances K. Pohl. " A n American in

3.

Venice: Ben Shahn and United

St,tcs Foreign Policy at the 1 9 S 4 Venice Bicnnale." Art History, vol.
4. no. I .
See Hans H aa cke. "Working Conditions." A rtjorllm, Summer 1 98 1 .

4.

Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach. "The M u s e u m o f Modern Art as

2.

pp. S6-6 1 , for a superb analysis o f the impact o f corpOr2te needs on

the art world.

2 8-5 1 .
new subjectivity and the modern

Latc Capitalist Ritual. " Marxist Pmprctivrs, Winter 1 978. pp.

S.

For a thorough discussion o f this

conditions in which it arises. sec Eli Zaretsky. Capitalism, th Family,

and Personal LIfe (New York: Harper Colophon. 1976).
6.

Jose Ortega y Gasset. TIl( De/rumanization of Art (New York: Anchor

7.

Michel Melot. " P issarro: An Anarchistic Artist in 1 880. " Marxist

Books. 1 9(6). pp. 6-7.

Perspectives, Winter 1 978, pp.

8.

22-54.

Renato Poggioli. The Theory of the A llatlt-liardr,

t ra n s. Gerald Fitz

gerald (New York: leon Editions, 1 9 7 1 ) .

9.

"Questions to Stella a n d Judd . " interview by Bruce Glaser. cd . b y

Lucy Lippard. i n Gregory Battcock. c d . Minimal Art (New York:

1 4 8 - 1 64.
" I n the Eye of the Sold ier. " In TI,(s( Times, 1 3 - 1 9
January 1 98 2 . reprinted ill t h i s volullle. pp. l IiS-8.
Dulton. 1 9(8). pp.

1 0.

IR R

Sec my report.