A re-read, from decades ago. He sees much of social life through the keyhole of status. We're all apes bowing before the silver back. An interesting, narrow way to view every damn thing. Still, his view that so much of NYC art from 50s-70s was more literary than pictorial still holds weight. First came the theory - the words - then paintings and their works exist to illustrate the text. I come upon this continually in museums. A picture, then ten yards of needed explanation. And thus, in the end, it much modern art becomes conservative, if not reactionary, in requiring words to enlighten the viewer of the value, importance, history, relevance, idea and mix of meanings and connections contained in a work that may be a pile of bricks, a scratch on an object, a flat surface with some lines. Book still stimulates, but its view still limited by the working principle that so many artists he mentions only wanted status and money (some did, like Warhol) and were not in it for an artistic adventure.

3.5 stars.

I have previously read his book From Bauhaus to Our House, and enjoyed that one more, possibly because Modernist architecture is still all around us, while you usually need to go to a gallery to see the kind of art that is talked about here. There was a lot of name-dropping which I found hard to follow at times. But it was a fun description of how modern art evolved in the 20th century (up until 1975 when this book was published).

If you are familiar with art history and would like a new perspective on the evolution of modern art, this book might be a humorous little read.

This book is tiny but mighty. Tom Wolfe dives deep into his vast word-hoard and emerges with a vastly delightful and informative account of 20th century art and theory. I read this after a few books on abstract expressionism and suggest you do the same. If you're interested in the topic, this is a must-read (if u can get your hands on a copy!) Likewise if you're a fan of Wolfe's clarity, snark, and glee.

Finally finished this and, while amusing and enlightening, i must say i do hope Tom Wolfe got his ass handed to him on numerous occassions

I forgot how crazy Tom Wolfe is lol I barely followed his argument but it’s fun to have his words bounce around in your brain

This was a very interesting read - Tom Wolfe talks about how modern art moved away from being a visual experience and started to be a reaction of what the critics were saying and it all culminated with conceptual art (I happen to like conceptual art, but I agree that it is less "artistic" in the classic sense of the word). Among the many artists he grills, Wolfe practically skewers Jackson Pollock and says that his art was a mere creation at the request of what the galleries wanted and that leads to one of the more interesting points in this book - that art is the art form that is least influenced by the general public's demand. There is a very tiny group of people that patronize art (unlike movies and music) and so it is their whims that dictate the creation, popularity, and sale of it.

A critique of modern art.
"Nowadays, without a theory to go with it I cannot see a painting at all."

Wolfe wrote a lot about how the upperclass yearned to be part of the counterculture, and how it was what it claimed to disdain. Here, he outlines how the art counterculture became what it set out to overthrow: art that has a narrative or literary purpose.

tModern Art has become completely literary: the paintings and other works exist only to illustrate the text.

The text is the theory of art. In Wolfe’s telling, artists, at least in the tiny art world of New York City and other metro centers, made art specifically to address art theory. He builds on New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer saying:

tRealism does not lack its partisans, but it does rather conspicuously lack a persuasive theory. and given the nature of our intellectual commerce with works of art, to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial—the means by which our experience of individual works is joined to our understanding of the values they signify.

Wolfe translates this as “these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.”

He then riffs off of this into a cynical history of modern art post-Picasso through Pop Art, Op Art, and then the retrograde (as the art critics called it) Photo-Realist.

tEarly Modernism had been a reaction to nineteenth-century realism, an abstraction of it, a diagram of it, to borrow John Berger’s phrase, just as a blueprint is a diagram of a house. But this Abstract Expressionism of the Tenth Street School was a reaction to earlier modernism itself, to Cubism chiefly. It was an abstraction of an abstraction, a blueprint of the blueprint, a diagram of the diagram—and a diagram of a diagram is metaphysics.

Wolfe describes the art world as a small town of housewives constantly trying to one-up each other. He calls it “Cultureburg”. And in Cultureburg, the way to determine the next wave is to find what you dislike the most. It’s a catch-22: if a critic says that an artwork is bad, that artwork must be the next big thing that overthrows everything before it.

tScull hated these drawings so profoundly, he promptly called up the artist and became his patron.

I recently re-watched the Ed Harris Pollock movie, and this book definitely put the world portrayed in that movie in perspective.

I'll need to hear other perspectives before I can decide whether I'm wholly convinced by Wolfe's argument. His main argument is that Modern Art sucks because it is fueled more by Art Theory than by the spirit of Art itself. He directs most of his satirical ammunition at the time period from Abstract Expressionism onward, arguing that during this epoch the Artists unwittingly became adjuncts of the Art Theorists, rather than the other way around (the way it should be).

Wolfe also tries to better delineate the shifting relationship between Art and Literature. He describes how artists used to be content to *depict* literary matter on their canvases (as in the case of Millet and the 19th-century realists). Then, during the 20th century, artists increasingly tried to *imitate* literature (as in the case of an unnamed conceptual artist whose "artwork" consisted entirely of a written description of what she wanted her artwork to be). In other words, Wolfe thinks modern artists, in their self-loathing, began to worship---and to try to imitate---literature of a sort: what Wolfe calls "the Word."

I can see why Wolfe is an acclaimed writer, anyway: he has a gift for hyperbole. He sets a phrase down on the page, then tries to one-up himself with the next phrase, and then the next, until his sentence is a looong ascending staircase composed of increasingly outrageous phrases... His is a crowded writing style (and one that draws heavily on the scientific vocabularies of our day), but it is also entertaining and clear. Wolfe also strikes me as one of those iconoclastic people who entirely too much *loves* being a troublemaker, a self-appointed gadfly (a la, say, Ezra Pound).

I haven't read Tom Wolfe in quite awhile, and I forgot how razor sharp his prose could be. This particular book takes on the modern art world. Mr. Wolfe is not a fan of that world, but he describes how art theory started driving art creation in the twentieth century.

He did get me thinking, and feeling somewhat relieved. I've been to MoMA several times for specific exhibits, but sometimes left just shaking my head and thinking it was me. As usual, Mr. Wolfe attacks pretentiousness will full frontal force. Whether it was limousine liberals in Radical Chic, or the whole concept of being "on the bus," he forces the reader to think beyond the popular and look under the mask.

I can't think of any contemporary writer who does similar writing in nonfiction. The world has become perhaps a more serious place, and therefor much in need of someone like Tom Wolfe to expose the posers. Perhaps that's what television is doing now, on cable.

I could not get into Wolfe's style.

How to mark the passing of the great Tom Wolfe? Reading one of his books - one I hadn't read already - seemed like the right way to honour Wolfe. Being a bit too time-poor to tackle The Right Stuff or I am Charlotte Simmons, this 100-page volume on modern art looked like a good choice. It didn't disappoint - not only does Wolfe provide his usual observations on status and status-seeking, he boils down the theories behind abstract expressionism, pop art, conceptual art and mininalism with great clarity and succinctness. He doesn't hide the fact he does not hold these movements in high regard but that doesn't detract from The Painted Word. The book's title comes from the fact that works in those styles require the viewer to know the (written) theories of art behind them in order for them to be comprehensible -unlike old-fashioned realistic art, which explains itself. That the patrons and buyers of those modern works in the decades following World War II were a small, wealthy elite who saw being involved in that milieu as a way of escapting their bourgeois indentities is well explained by Wolfe. Reading The Painted Word, it emerges that Wolfe is an artist himself (of the realistic kind) - there are some great caricatures by him. The only flaw is that in a description of one particular work he goes over the top and reverts to the over-description and hyperbole he is sometimes (rightly) accused of.