A witty and irreverent look at art in the 20th century. I most enjoyed the later chapters, in which I recognized more of the painters by name and usually had a good idea of their work. Wolfe scoffs at the pretensions of the contemporary art world, the posturing and theorizing of the intellectual elite, and skewers the rise of abstract expressionism and its effort to denigrate and displace representational painting. The narration is lively (a really well-done audiobook). But bear in mind that this was written in 1974. Wolfe took a dim view of much that has stood the test of time after all. I wasn’t always sure what he was right and wrong about but it’s entertaining.

If your interest is writing or art, you’ll enjoy The Painted Word by Tom Wolf. If you like both, then this irreverent, little book will make you laugh, nod in agreement, or cry out in protest. You definitely won’t be bored. This is Wolf at the top of his game and you’ll find yourself constantly reading passages aloud to anyone within earshot.

First published in 1975, Wolf decomposes modern art movements in a way that is both enlightening and entertaining. His clever style provides the reader with an inside look at the art world and illuminates the follies of our cultural elite. Even if you have only a cursory understanding of modern art, Wolf’s insightfulness will prompt numerous “oh yeah, now I get it” moments.

The Painted Word will make your next visit to an art museum more discerning and a heck of a lot more fun.

Liked it lots, but I always feel a little gypped when a publisher puffs up what amounts to a magazine feature’s worth of words with a big font, generous line-spacing and margins, and some illustrations, to make it just big enough to put legible text on the spine so they can sell it as a book.

I heard about the existence of this little book, in our museum, in front of a perplexing (to me at least), painting by Richard Carlyon (Passage to India, and here is part of its label copy: The initial color choice of each painting is wholly intuited. After the initial choice, however, the color is adjusted and "keyed" to work against the structure of the "tracks" and of the canvas shape itself.
... In other words, I always, "fill out" with color pushing against established parameters. - Richard Carlyon
A longtime professor at the School of Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University and an iconic figure in the Richmond art scene, Richard Carlyon mentored generations of painting students. Part of a series in which he explored place, Passage of India marked a transition for the artist who began moving away from the medium of oil paint and into more experimental materials such as acrylic paint and Liquitex polymer. With this shift in materials, Carlyon painted multiple thin layers of paint with much greater precision and control. Works from the series all featured large, rectilinear fields of brilliant color.)
We had a guest, a friend of Mr. Carlyon, who came to help us understand his works. (The other one of Mr. Carlton’s work, A Screwing, was even more strange, as it is made up of a series of frames on the wall)

So it is hilarious to read Wolff’s little book, tearing apart the bubbles, “post modern” art world formed over the years, not relenting his tongue over abstract expressionism, pop art, color fields, minimalism, conceptual art… to list a few. I have to say, it is laughing out loud funny and i wholeheartedly agree with his opinions. It is not hard for me to like the book, since I have often found many of the abstract artworks to be pretentious at best and total garbage at the core.

Another in the series of books I took home from Moms estate, this one seemed like it was due for a read when I heard of Wolfe's passing.

This book is very much in keeping with Wolfe's witty style of writing and sense that he was in fact a man on the scene for the modern art world theory kerfuffle. As someone who only had a tangential understanding of the history of the NY art scene of the 20th Century, this was a great introduction to the arms-race of art theory and it's proponents on the scene of the burgeoning Modern Art movement. The whole idea of the title "the painted word" slowly comes into focus as you learn about the foregrounding of the art "scene" and the way theory came to drive the work of the artists in the era; and proposed as the logical outcome, art exhibits of posted theory with small picture plaques next to the "work" (theory)...very clever, and wonderfully cheeky.

Like most of the recovered books from moms, it was fun to imagine what she likely thought of the text reading it so close to the historical moments and growing into her own in the art world.

Tom Wolfe and moms R.I.P.

dios! ese estilo tan cheesy de escribir... me acuerdo leyendo libros asi cuando era ni~na y eso paso por intelectualidad. todos los chistes tan ridiculos. 'mirame, estoy tan listo!'
ugh. y casi todas sus listas de otros 'listos' en el mundo del arte eran gringos. hombres casi todos.

un gran porciento del libro es una pelusa, fluff, stuffing. si puedes cortalo o 'cortar la grasa,' como dijo wolfe--bueno, hay unos comentarios interestantes sobre comentarios y teorias del arte, en particular q tan importante era la palabra, el critic y los teorias para el artista y el movimiento del dia. op artists called their work perceptual abstraction. 'first you get the word and then you can see'

wolfe underscores 'process of creation.' arguably, as many interesting quotes are attributed to others as to him.

*hilton kramer, 'frankly, these days, wo a theory to go w it, i can't see a painting.'

*'the goals of the artist according to freud: fame, money and beautiful lovers.' ~freud

*'aesthetics is for the artists as orintholody is for the birds,' said barnett newman

wolfe:
*'the public that buys books...by the millions...records by the billions and fills stadiums for concerts, the public that spends $100 million on a single movie--this public affects taste, theory and artistic outlook in lit., music and drama...the same has never been true in art.' where they public is but 'tourists' and 'gawkers.'

*'we got rid of 19th c storybook realism. then...representational objects. then...the 3rd dimension altogether and got really flat [ab. exp.] then... airiness, brushstrokes, most of the paint, and the last viruses of drawing and complicated designs [hard edge, color field, wash. school.]'

I like abstract art. I like the sheer manic quality of Jackson Pollock. I am immersed in the deep, rich portals of Mark Rothko. But, in these cases, this comes a place of genuine enjoyment. A mistaken notion of post-War American Art that this showed a break from the shackles of "realism," showing the aesthetic beauty in shapes and colors themselves.

Wolfe challenges this notion, showing how much art communities have been in this constant, cynical turmoil between their own supposed anti-bourgeois sentiment, and the wealthy who help them survive. This becomes especially true, Wolfe claims, with the center of artistic development shifting to the States (primarily New York). The art, then, becomes secondary to whatever Theory birthed it.

Thus, Wolfe has put me into a bit of a predicament. I've become someone who feels that the truth of a piece of art is best unlocked by understanding the time, place, and creator of the work. To acknowledge the truth of some of my favorite pieces of abstract American art hint towards would be to accept this overt cynicism that clearly clashes with my own aesthetic experiences with the pieces. Maybe a purist attachment to one method of analysis proves impossible to maintain.

This is the sort of thing that makes Wolfe such a great author. He can question how you view these very strange aspects of our society with such clarity and such clever turns of phrase.

I loved reading this! Serves not only as a scalpel-sharp (if a little off target) critique of the phenomenon of Modern art in the 20th century but as a short, punchy, and funny summary of art, artists, and art movements (as well as their relation to cultural and historical events)- which for me was just as valuable. I’d highly recommend to anyone who is looking for a tasty little overview of art history in the last century, or who has ever felt a little frustrated by a stupid ass- but very famous painting.

Wolfe's writing is erudite in these essays, maybe to accompany the lofty topic of the art world. It probably felt less condescending in the 1970s when it was written, and more of a "fresh" observation. It is a document of the evolutions in art movements. He writes in minute detail the work of a woman artist "whose name he couldn't remember" that he saw in an exhibition organized by Tom Marioni at the Richmond Art Center. I wonder what the unknown woman artist thought of that.

Tom Wolfe has mastered the art of being shocked and horrified at the mundane and obvious. This book has the character of a child that has discovered some new situation and, misconstruing it, lets forth a torrent of outrage without insight. His assault on 'theory' only demonstrates the necessity of substance to fill out style.

The Painted Word is primarily a book about the rise of modern art—and art theory. (It also feels as if it’s a little bit about Tom Wolfe, too, but then, what book of his doesn’t feel that way?) Still, it’s an engaging read, filled with Wolfe’s studied observations and dripping with a detached bemusement toward the twisted subculture of art. Fortunately, The Painted Word is also filled with fascinating character sketches of the artists themselves. One of the most compelling—and oft repeated—arguments in the book is the notion that there are two key components necessary for the artist to attain lasting greatness: 1) The Boho Dance, in which the artist exhibits innovative work and struts his stuff amongst his peers all while showing utter disdain for the culture beyond the doors of his studio and 2) The Consummation, in which the culturati actually select the chosen artists to carry forth the standard of the movement-du-jour and the artist (albeit after some discreet hesitation) accepts the accolades and attention.

Wolfe argues that the artist who gets stuck in a crippling disdain for his audience, who cannot accept the offer to dance when it is made, is doomed to stagnation and will not be revered by history. Picasso, he argues, became Picasso, largely because he navigated the transition from one artistic stage to the other with ease. Perhaps, one is left to surmise, the secret to greatness lies not solely in talent, but in the ability to be gracious and accept the patron’s hand when proffered.

The only frustration for this reader—which may simply reflect my own ignorance of the book’s history—lay in having to wait until the end of the book to discover that I was reading a reissue of a book that was first published in 1975 (copyright page notwithstanding). As a result, no art or movement that has occurred since 1975 is mentioned. No discussion of the ways that the technological revolution will change the face of art history in the decades to come. No theorizing as to the Internet’s effects on broadening the horizons of the cloistered art scene. I kept hoping for that to be addressed, and was disappointed when it was not. Something as simple as Picador putting “Anniversary Edition” or “Heritage Printing” (or some other indicator of its age) on the cover would have saved me the pain of unrequited hope that turning that final page delivered. (Made worse by the fact that the “Epilogue”—hope, oh hope!—speaks about a time twenty-five years hence, in the year 2000. Oy! Give a poor reader some warning would you? An Epilogue, particularly if the edition is a new release and the writer is still alive, should not itself be 34 years out of date. At the very least, Picador should grant its readers this concession: Epilogue, 1975.)

Still the prose is sharp and lively and the vignettes featuring Pollock, Warhol, and Picasso and their benefactors are priceless. The clever chapter titles (would we expect any less from the man who penned The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby?) and Wolfe’s pen-and-ink drawings round out the entire package in an ironic art-meets-artist-meets-critic-meets-reader-meets-public sort of way.

Tom Wolfe at his cynical best . In this clever, witty, short book he lays out this argument: the modern art movements of 1940-1970 were less the result of the creative expressions of artists but more a response to rising art theory and the dictates of the prevailing art critics-- the dueling Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, or "Cultureburg" as Wolfe calls them. Wolfe walks us through each movement or "ism" ( fauvism, cubism, abstract expressionism, minimalism, etc) through Pop Art and Conceptual Art illustrating how each made a mark by becoming increasingly more reductionist--eliminating realism, then line, then emotion, then dimensionality, on and on until there was nothing left to eliminate except the walls and the museum itself! Cultureburg was so influential at the time that what they claimed was "in" was what artists would produce.

The Painted Word may have been written in 1974 but Wolfe's shrewd observations of NYC society are alive and well. Some of my favorites:

"Collecting contemporary art--the latest thing--appeals specifically to those who fell most uneasy about their own commercial wealth. 'See, I'm not like them..Those United FUnd Chairmen...those young presidents..those mindless NYAC stripe tied goddamn good to see you guys.'"

Wolfe refers to the Art World as "Le Monde" and about it stated "The Public is NOT invited"

"Critics of Modern Art tell us: Without a theory to go with it, you cant see a painting"
"The paintings only exist to illustrate the (critical theory) text."

"Modern Art arrived in the US in 1929 like Standard Oil...in the form of the Museum of Modern Art.