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The New Realism
| Article
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10494 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1986 |
2,205 Words |
| Author
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James Cooper
James Cooper is an advisor to the Arts section of The World
and I, and the art critic for the New York City Tribune |
Most contemporary American realist painters are unknown to the general public, whereas the names of a great many abstract artists are familiar due in large part to the enthusiastic exposure granted by the art establishment and the liberal media.
Occasionally an event disturbs the complacency of the establishment such as the appearance of William Bailey's handsomely realistic Portrait of S which was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine (June 7, 1982) under the provocative title The Revival of Realism.
The senior art critic of the New York Times, however, was quick to dismiss the new wave of realism in a highly critical essay that began with the sweeping statement: "Realism, like influenza, is always with us."
Despite the lengthy denunciation of realist painting in general, not a single name of a contemporary realist painter was mentioned by the Times critic. However, in the ensuing weeks and months many articles appeared in the Times praising the works of the current crop of neo-expressionists.
Although a strong case could be presented to justify the revolution of abstractionism in the arts, its time has clearly come and passed. As early as the end of the 1950s, the revolutionary phase was over. Hofmann, Pollock, de Kooning and Gorky have succeeded in pulverizing American cultural values, and no doubt some of those values needed shaking up badly.
By the early 1960s, however, the second stage of the revolution had already softened into a stage of "refinement." The leaders of the revolution had already been immortalized in that famous Life magazine group photo. Many of them were tiring. Others were beginning to repeat themselves like de Kooning. The best--Gorky, Rothko, and Pollock--committed suicide, each in his own fashion.
The abstract art movement, with its emphasis on an absence of values and a lack of cosmological order, quickly came to symbolize the disorders that characterized modern society after the Second World War.
An establishment that would reach enormous economic proportions by the 1970s took root around the fiery rebels who launched a revolution during the 1940s. This establishment wasn't about to give up on a good thing just because the leaders were dying
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