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... But I Know What I Like. Or Do I?

Judith Shulevitz
Posted Thursday, Sept. 30, 1999, at 11:32 PM ET

Is the "Sensation" show at the Brooklyn Museum art or trash? Is the Edmund Morris biography of Ronald Reagan literature or a big mistake? Culturebox doesn't know, and neither do you, dear reader, unless you're in the tiny minority of New Yorkers who have seen the one or read the other. But that doesn't stop Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Hillary Rodham Clinton, a majority of U.S. senators, editorial page writers around the country, Culturebox's colleague Chatterbox, and, of course, Culturebox from holding forth. And why should it? We know a biographer's busted play or an artist's insult to Catholicism and good taste when we see it.

But how do we know? From a few nouns and adjectives in a newspaper--"Virgin Mary," "elephant dung," "bisected pig," "fictional biographer"--and some overlit images on the television screen. Since that's all we need to come to a publishable understanding of a work of art--or something that may or may not be art, we're not sure--we feel someone should advise "Sensation" artist Chris Ofili and author Edmund Morris that they've each made a tragically stupid choice of profession. Think of the paintings they could have avoided painting, the books they could have not written, the time they could have saved not layering paint (or, in the case of Ofili, paint, magazine pages, and elephant dung) or doing research! If it's the idea of the thing rather than the thing itself that's going to influence the people who will influence the public, why type the words or cast the dung upon the canvas? A press release would do as well.

Actually, we who labor in the quick-take manufacturing industry--which is to say, pundits in general, Internet pundits in particular, and Slate pundits most of all--know the following facts to be self-evident, even though, in the heat of the chase, we prefer to ignore them completely: The excerpt is not the book. The reproduction is not the work of art. If they were, we wouldn't need museums or books. We could all study art books for our art and read magazines for our literature. Art critics could skip openings; book reviewers could rely on summaries in Publishers Weekly. Art and literature are not the rough approximations of themselves. They are the sum of their parts, and their parts include formal properties and details that do not translate into other media.

So, for instance, what is elephant dung in the context of Ofili's painting of a Nigerian Virgin Mary? Culturebox doesn't know, because she hasn't seen the work, and neither do Giuliani, Clinton, et al., but it is at least possible that if she stood before the painting she would think: Aha! Dung has a whole new meaning in the context of the sardonic primitivism, the parodic putti-cum-naked-models, the way the entire picture functions both as an homage to and an ironic commentary on the Western cult of the Madonna and its role in African culture. Or she might think: This is horseshit as well as elephant dung!

The practice of pronouncing without firsthand experience will not stop just because Culturebox has ranted about it, of course--nor should it. But she, for one, is so humbled by the wrath of Giuliani, whose know-nothingism is attached to fearsome punitive powers, that she has joined her local chapter of Pundits Anonymous. There she will place her faith in a higher power and pray that next time she's tempted to discourse on that of which she knows absolutely nothing, He'll shut her up. Maybe she'll drag Chatterbox to the next meeting.

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Judith Shulevitz is a former culture editor of Slate. She is writing a book about the Sabbath.
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The Fraymaster responds:


This reader says art does not equal beauty:

While the Madonna and dung is certainly (and certainly intentionally) inflammatory--and did you catch the piece in the New York Times where the artist claimed to have no idea why folks were so upset?--I think there's a bigger and older issue still unresolved. Namely, that the art world thinks that the purpose of art is to expand the boundaries of human perception and to confront our cultural limitations while hoi polloi would be far more likely to define it as to render beauty with skill.

Until curators and critics manage to convince the great unwashed the beauty and skill are irrelevant (or even antagonistic) to art, we will have these contretemps every year or two.

While this one thinks the art wars are blasé:

If someone told you that I painted a realistic portrait of a Campbell Soup can and put it in a frame and it was being displayed at the Brooklyn Museum, would you need to go there to assess it? No, because it has been done before. No one would be talking about it. If, however, I drew a moustache on a picture of the Pope, and received government funding for it, the whole country would start talking about it. Why? Its been done before too. Taking government funding and using it as a platform to gain notoriety by bashing religion or using religious icons in a conventionally blasphemous way is BORING!!! It has been done to death. Do we have to start talking about it just because some politician is using the issue to differentiate himself. I mean a politician using this issue to gain points is a "dog bites man" story as well. I don't mean to sound cynical, but my god this just too boring.


--Michael Brus (10/1)

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