Published Monday, January 1, 2001

While web-surfing a bit last night, I stumbled upon an article at Artnet.com by Thomas Hoving. He's the former Director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The article is titled My Eye and contains his description of some of his favorite works of art. I proceeded to read what could only be described as a pathetic and brainless parroting of decades of Modernist propaganda and misinformation.

He starts with a common apologia for modernist drips and splatters: "All art's abstract." With this statement he attempts to confer authenticity on talentless charlatans like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, as if their splotches and splatters could somehow reasonably be compared to Rembrandt , David , Ingres or Bouguereau . If you think about this line rationally, it's no more different than saying that all music is noise; that all speech is sound; and that all computers are just wire, plastic, and minerals. Therefore, if his argument is taken to its logical conclusion, screeching brakes are like Beethoven; a grunting rhinoceros is equal to Shakespeare; and a pile of scrap metal and wire is as good - no, even better - than an IBM computer. What Mr Hoving has done is try and convince his audience that modern artists are really of the same calibre as the Old Masters - like Rembrandt or Raphael . How could anyone really believe that Jackson Pollock splatters are any more intelligent, relevant or sincere than a painting by Rembrandt? Compared to Rembrandt most so-called "modern artists" aren't modern art all. They're prehistoric. The fact that speech, painting, and writing are abstract is no excuse for what I term the infantilisation of some of humanity's greatest artistic achievements.

"Infantilisation" is indeed exactly what Modernist criteria for greatness has produced. "Modernism" itself is a misnomer. Those myriad nihilistic artists, writers and critics who have systematically tried to destroy fine art for the last 100 years, have arrogated a name unto themselves that is synonymous with progress, sophistication, and a more advanced state of development. Generally, something that is "Modern" is something that is better than what came before. But Modernism in the arts is not. It is backward, retrograde, destructive, primitive and infantile. It's no accident that so many people are moved to remark: "My six year old could have done that!" upon viewing a 'modern' work. Therefore, the appropriate term to describe the movement that marked the 20^th century art world is, "infantilism".

My dear Mr. Hoving sir, it is rather the skillful alignment of abstract elements into recognizable and emotionally charged universal human experiences and themes, by the hand of a well trained and highly experienced master with a poet's "eye," that creates great works of art. Piles of garbage or splotches of pigment, no matter how bright, bizarre or evenly balanced, can do this. So-called abstract art is not art at all. Works of people like Pollock, DeKooning and Rothko are not even deserving of the label of craft, for craftsmen at least endeavor to endow their work with symmetry, skill, functionality and beauty. It is only with the addition of human themes that works first deserve to be considered as fine art.

Hoving soon starts listing some of his favorite pieces. Incredibly, one of the first things he discusses is a primitive statue from the Cycladic Islands. It is of a woman, dated 2400-2600 BC. He extols its virtues with the words: "These sculptures, although totally abstract, nonetheless capture the mystery and beauty of femininity far better I think, than Venus de Milo." There was even a photo of this 'masterpiece': a stick figure with a triangular head that looked like it might have been done by any nursery school child. Now, while no one is doubting the sincerity of the Cycladic craftsman who made this statue, it is on the other hand sheer absurdity to claim that it is better than the Venus de Milo - a product of a far more sophisticated civilization — one which gave us philosophy, musical theory, countless examples of fine art, not to mention the whole concept of democracy. Isn't there something even a little perverse in setting the highest achievements of Grecian sculpture on a lower pedestal than this stick figure idol?

"GET REAL!" Are we supposed to swallow that this Cycladic statue somehow captures the beauty and mystery of femininity? Every woman should be up in arms (Venus is missing hers) against this insult to their gender. Not only is this stick figure lifeless, but its form is ugly, it has no face other than a geometric protrusion - presumably a nose - and is totally lacking personality and character. Its stick arms are folded and it is doing nothing. Does he wish to suggest that women just facelessly stand around with arms folded doing nothing? Please tell me Mr. Hoving. I'm dying to know. Where exactly is the 'mystery' here? Actually, the artists of these stick figures were likely trying to be accurate, not abstract. However, they had not yet developed the necessary skills. If this 4500-year-old artist had been presented with the Venus de Milo, a Bernini or a Rodin , whose work do you suppose they would have thought was superior?

If this is Hoving's taste, we can begin to understand why so many great masterpieces of 19th century humanist representational painting, by some of history's most important artists, were de-accessioned for peanuts under his, and his predecessors', governance of America's premier art institution. I think an accounting is in order. What happened to all of those great masterpieces that were bequeathed to the Met by Catherine Lorillard Wolfe (and others) with the rumored stipulation that they were not ever to be sold? Some of them would today be valued at a hundred times their market worth in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

His list of favorites, while not all preposterous (he liked an unfinished Bernini or a Michelangelo ) included such monuments of collective stupidity as Marcel Duchamp's The Great Glass and Kazimir Malevich's White on White, which he calls "as serious as a religious icon".

I cannot help but consider the unforgivable tragedy that has befallen our great artistic heritage when I realize that such was the perspective of the leader of the Metropolitan Museum for so many important years. I also can't help but ponder that if this is Hoving's "Eye"; it's a shame that it didn't meet up with a good opthomoligist a long time ago.