The trouble with Western art today

Contemporary art isn't just shocking. Much of it fails to appeal to both heart and head.

from the December 19, 2007 edition

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Museums are crowded as viewers do their best to take in the cultural superstars. But increasingly, the works are less than nourishing. Instead of a complex stew of hints and tints and imaginative magic, the public is being served a thin gruel.

What's wrong with contemporary art? By staking out the extremes of artistic practice, it excludes much of the core, and thus excludes our ability to react and connect with our eyes, our hearts, our gut, and our minds. Emily Dickinson defined art's visceral effect this way: "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

Contemporary art is increasingly one-note rather than symphonic, emphasizing either cerebral or formal appeal. Instead of taking your head off, it'll have you nodding off or shaking your head in dismay.

A cardinal rule that applies to all art forms seeking to be evocative – not just provocative – is "show, don't tell." Too much contemporary art is a no-show, relying on content to tell the viewer a take-away message. And then there's the other polarity of art loaded toward sensual, formal appeal, which is all show and no tell. What I'd like to see is show and tell.

Two retrospectives currently in New York display the warring tendencies.

At the Museum of Modern Art, Martin Puryear's semiabstract, wooden sculptures appeal to the eye with their tactile, curved surfaces, yet their message is mute. They show the craftsman's ability to create innovative forms, but they tell us nothing explicitly.

At the opposite extreme is conceptual art pioneer Lawrence Weiner's exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, consisting of pithy slogans stenciled on the walls, seemingly more verbal than visual art. Words alone express an image or idea (for example: "BUILT TO SEE OVER THE EDGE"), with no object to seduce the eye or arouse an emotional response.

Donald Kuspit, professor of philosophy and art history at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, calls austere conceptual art "a total disaster." Idea-based or one-liner art is "so narcissistically involuted, very much for a small group of cognoscenti, that it's become inaccessible except for the self-styled happy few." Between off-putting conceptual art and the tendency of political art to harangue viewers, it's no wonder the public feels intimidated, alienated, and confused.

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