Rating: 
Summary: Theory As Art As Theory As...
Review: Well, here we go - time to criticize a culture critic. Try saying that three times fast.Anyone who knows anything about Tom Wolfe will know exactly what to expect from this 1975 exploration of the 1950-1970 Art World. Considering that he's always on the lookout for something funny to say, he does quite a good job, probably because the Art World is apparently a pretty funny place. Then again, that's always true of any insular group that develops its own vocabulary and learns to take itself too seriously. According to Wolfe, that judgment applies equally to the artists, their critics, and the small world of collectors that support them both. He uses as an example the following cycle: Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning paint a few pictures using mere blobs of paint. At about the same time, Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg conclude in their columns that painting must naturally go in the direction of increased "flatness" to fulfill its destiny (and they do, in fact, write in such semi-apocalyptic terms). To illustrate their point, Greenberg and Rosenberg talk up Pollack and de Kooning. Art patrons in Milan, Rome, Paris and New York read the columns and get interested in Pollack and de Kooning. Thus encouraged, these artists paint even flatter paintings, Greenberg and Rosenberg chat them up even more in their columns, the Art World gets more excited, and round and round we go until a guy named Leo Steinberg smashes into the cycle. He declares that they've got it all wrong, the true "flatness" exists in the Pop Art of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and the whole thing starts all over again. Only with even more feverish declarations of theoretical orthodoxy this time. Eventually, of course, the theory becomes far more important in the Art World than the paintings. This gives rise to Op Art, Happenings, Conceptual Art, and the world we live in today wherein the answer to the question "What is Art?" is "That which we find in Art Museums." Wolfe splashes all this high comedy around in a truly scrumptious style, full of exclamation points. Behind the rhetoric, I suspect, is a man who thinks very highly of himself, but what else can we expect from a culture critic? Fortunately, what with all those exclamation points, it's fairly clear that Wolfe doesn't really take himself all that seriously, so his work is much easier to enjoy than it otherwise would be. Even more interesting than the language, however, is the odd feeling one gets from The Painted Word that Wolfe doesn't think of the mid-century Art Follies as necessarily a bad thing, or even bad art. And indeed, who says that Art Theory is anything other than Art itself? Why criticize this development? Why not just enjoy it? So in his last few pages, Wolfe predicts a retrospective in the year 2000. Instead of the paintings, this retrospective presents the true Art of the 1950's-1970's - the columns of Greenberg, Rosenberg, Steinberg, and whatever other Bergs in enormous reproduction, with tiny illustrations of the paintings in question next to them. As I write this, such an exhibit is nowhere yet to be seen, but that may only mean that Wolfe is smarter than the average museum curator (a supposition I can neither confirm nor deny). Be that as it may, Wolfe's craft is undeniable - sarcastic, informed, bitchy, and overwhelmingly funny. If the Word is Art, then the hyper-serious Greenberg, Rosenberg and Steinberg are mere wannabes. Wolfe, like Groucho Marx, is an Artist. Benshlomo says, in the words of William Shakespeare, better a witty fool than a foolish wit.
Rating: 
Summary: Archie Bunker on Art.
Review: While this book is not without its moments of humor, it is obvious to art lovers that Wolfe has little idea what he is talking about. He lumps any kind of art he doesn't like into a single category of "modern" and thus bad--no matter that Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art are nearly absolute opposites; to him they are the same because they differ from what he considers the historic Western tradition of realism. Wolfe's contempt for any kind of innovation in the visual arts leaps off the page. He has no ability to appreciate what the artists he bashes are trying to express--the storms and fury of the Expressionists, the playfullness of the Pop Artists or the cold, elegant purity of the Minimalists. They deserve better critics than this.
Rating: 
Summary: a biased reviewer
Review: Yes, I ma an artist ...(sorrY) who cannot think ... or write. All I can do is ... paint pictures like Norman Rockwell. Tha's art right there. No thought required, no deeper meanings... On a more erudite note, Mr. Wolfe makes some notable errors:
1. He indicts not just contemporary art, but all art that is not realistic or pictorial alone. This includes the great populist movements of Impressionism (based on optical color theory), and Surrealism (based on psychoanalytic theory). Wolfe's desire for strict realism dates back to the era of Gustave Courbet, who created starkly realistic work to the disgust of the general public and critics, who were used to the idyllic romanticizing in the art of that time. Before you judge Mr. Wolfe's argument, check your own tastes and see if they fit his narrow criteria. Van Gogh--there's emotional representation informing his colors and brushwork. Too theoretical!
2. Mr. Wolfe conveniently forgets that art in the 1960's became theoretical in an effort to eradicate the artist's dependence on a gallery system that rejected content in favor of decoration(the type of work that sells the best). Installations, performances, conceptualism were started by the artists themselves, not by critics or tastemakers, as a reaction to art strictly as a decorative commodity. When no one would or could show this type of work, they exhibited/performed in their own studios, far from the eyes of critics and curators.
3. Mr. Wolfe assumes that no part of the public is interested in non-realistic art. How many people visit the Maya Lin Vietnam memorial versus the Frederick Hart Vietnam memorial (created because the former was too theoretical?) As with much art, what initially seems challenging and controversial (remember how many paintings Van Gogh sold in his lifetime) becomes accepted, even loved, over time...
Ultimately, this is an intellectually lazy book destined to preach to the (un)converted.
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