Adieu to the avante-garde - avante-garde art

Reason, July, 1997 by Kanchan Limaye

Twenty years later, Wolfe and Kramer meet again, more or less, on the same turf. This time, however, there is evidence that their old argument about art - what it is and how to see it - is approaching resolution. "Things don't have to happen at the end of centuries," as Wolfe tells his Kitchen audience. "But somehow they do."

"So I made this great prediction," Wolfe is saying, "'Picasso: The Bouguereau of the year 2020.'" But he admits to his audience, a mixed crowd of stylishly dressed uptowners, baseball-capped high schoolers, and women in black leather downtown chic, that "my prediction began to look very bad." Picassos brought fabulous prices at Sotheby's; the "art birds" began showing up at the auctions, "lissome young women with these glossy shanks which they keep crossing and uncrossing."

And then the Picasso books started coming out. "All of them had the same premise," he says: "Here's the greatest artist of the 20th century. The only question is, was he a good man or a bad man? And Arianna Huffington in her book said he was a very bad man. Look at the way he treated women! But even she said: Well, he was the greatest artist of the 20th century. And then there was John Richardson's book...in which he says, Well, you know, for the greatest artist of the 20th century he wasn't such a bad man...."

Then, Wolfe says, he picked up the December 16 issue of The New Yorker and saw "an absolutely fascinating review" by Adam Gopnik of Richardson's second volume about Picasso's life, "in which Gopnik says, Who cares whether he's a good man or a bad man? He's such a bad artist! Look at these images he's famous for: These harlequins. These saltimbanques. These minotaurs. These fat nudes. Bullfighters." Wolfe grins as he continues describing the Gopnik piece: "Gopnik says all these images were stale when he used them, when he started picking them up. And he says: Look at this Blue Period. Why are all these people blue? Because they're sad. He said, boy, talk about originality."

"Anybody can write whatever they want," Wolfe admits, but the point is that Gopnik's very beat is "what the word is in Paris. And the word in Paris right now - and this is what interested me so much about it - is that Picasso is a fraud. That Picasso is as confining as these academic artists - Bouguereau, Meissonier, Gerome - any of them could ever possibly have been with their emphasis upon technique."

The prices for Picassos haven't dropped yet, but Wolfe allows himself his vision of art's future anyway. "We can expect - those of us who are around to take art history courses in the year 2020 - to see the glee with which the professors [present] the Demoiselles d'Avignon." Imagine the reactions, Wolfe tells the audience. "They took it seriously! Look at those women with no hair! Look at those hands that look like duck beaks! Look at those faces with two eyes on the same side of the nose!

"And the classes will snicker, and professors will have the time of their lives."

Kanchan Limaye (krl8@columbia.edu) is a New York writer.