How "transgressive" becomes an excuse for crummy art

In their unimpressive defense of the city-funded imagery that promotes violence against law enforcement, local progressives have claimed that the role of art is to be "transgressive." Who--besides fraudulent artist--thinks so? Roger Kimball offers perspective in The Spectator.

It is time we recognized that art need not be adversarial or transgressive in order to be good or important. In this context, it is worth noting that great damage has been done--above all to artists but also to public taste--by romanticizing the tribulations of the 19th Century avant-garde. Everyone is brought up on stories of how an obtuse public scorned Manet, censored Gaugin and drove poor Van Gough to madness and suicide. But the fact that these great talents went unappreciated has had the undesirable effect of encouraging the thought that because one is unappreciated, one is therefore a genius.

It has also made it extremely difficult to expose fraudulent work as such. For any frank dismissal of art--especially art that cloaks itself in the mantle of the avant-garde--is immediately met by the rejoined: "Ah, but they made fun of Cezanne, too: they thought that Stravinsky was a charlatan."

The question remains: Where did we go wrong? What are we missing in the contemporary art world? Doubtless the list is a long one. But if one had to sum up volumes in a single word, a good candidate would be "beauty." What the art world is lacking today is an allegiance to beauty.

Read the whole thing here.

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Photo by Fountain.