From "Art Critics in Extremis," an essay* published by Hal Foster in 2002 or so:
Tom Wolfe notoriously trashed all late-modernist art as a critical scam, a "painted word" contrived in "Cultureberg" (his anti-Semitic slam against [Clem] Greenberg, [Harold] Rosenberg, and [Leo] Steinberg).Hasn't Wolfe been saying that about all of New York Jewry and culture for at least two decades? I didn't realize that Minimalism was at the kernel of the disagreement. Anyway, though Wolfe might point to his Jewish wife as evidence against his being an anti-Semite ("My best friend is Jewish!"), that phrase has always bugged me as textbook racism. It's a simple enough rule, and one that any satirist is smart enough to realize: If you're disagreeing with a group of Jews, don't phrase that disagreement in terms of your opponents' religion. Why will no one sit him down, explain this to him, and ask him politely to stop already? Good satire doesn't mean license to be a total idiot about commonsensical stuff.
Nevertheless, all credit goes to Wolfe for coining "fuck patois" in I Am Charlotte Simmons (an otherwise intolerable book).
* The same essay was more previously published as "Art Agonistes", but my copy appears to be an updated one.
Posted by Kriston at December 21, 2006 1:49 PMI read the Foster essay (or the earlier version linked to above) last night; not bad, though I have a feeling I may have read it before. Either that, or quotes from it, or the same quotes he uses in it (definitely some of the latter, as I've read the Amy Newman book he's writing about a couple of times.)
Anyway, it reminded me of a few things that had been on my mind after reading Varnedoe's Pictures of Nothing. One for now: we should start to call all of those still invested in whatever ways in the old '60's Artforum/October/Greenberg/etc. business as either Left or Right Greenbergians, in the manner of Left and Right Hegelians. Just for fun, if nothing else.
Have you read Newman's book? A little frustrating at times, but well worth a look.
Posted by: JL at December 22, 2006 9:49 AM