Some may be surprised to learn that there was a time when critics were the 400lb gorillas of the art world. Irving Sandler, who just launched a book of essays, From Avant-Garde to Pluralism, at the Cue Foundation on West 25th Street, is one of the last of these jungle animals. His career began in New York in the 1950s, a time when the painters of what would be called the New York School – de Kooning, Pollock, Clyfford Still, Franz Kline et al – were struggling on with small hope of reward, or even recognition, except among their often rancorous fellows, a time when Ad Reinhardt, one of the most rancorous of them, described his art as “private”.
Art’s eeny-meeny heft meant that power was differently distributed. “The art world was composed of certain artists, certain art editors, art critics, and a few historians, certain museum directors and curators, dealers, collectors,” Sandler says. “And we come to know one another, and to network. And within this conglomeration powers shift. In the 1950s when there was no market – power, taste-making power – was mostly with artists. Then the market begins to open up.
“In 1957 Jackson Pollock’s ‘Autumn Rhythm’ sold for $30,000 to the Met. An unheard of price! And then the next year the show New American Painting goes to Europe. And that was back to back with another show Sixteen Americans. Europe begins buying. And so do American collectors for the first time.”
By then, paradoxically, it was all over for the abstract expressionists. “Alfred Barr by ’58 is looking for something new and says so very openly,” says Sandler; Barr being the grand panjandrum of the Museum of Modern Art. “A number of prominent people think that abstract expressionism is played out. And in the 60s power shifts to critics.”
This was a time when important art was perceived as being made by “schools”, one succeeding another, and if one new group was “right,” rivals must necessarily be retrograde, suspect. In the early 60s the main event was the three-way fight between colour-field abstraction, minimalism and pop. The critic Clement Greenberg, a lead gorilla, took to supporting colour-field painters such as Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler against the likes of Frank Stella, Ad Reinhardt (who, he told me, was “sugary”), minimalists and the heinous pop artists.
Greenberg accumulated enormous power, which he didn’t mind using. He extracted significant work from artists he supported and, as executor, he re-cut Morris Louis canvases to his own liking and left David Smith sculptures out of doors to strip their painted surfaces, of which he disapproved.
The era of the Big Critics – a time mocked in Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word — was brief. “By the late 60s power begins to shift to dealers. You had Castelli, Emmerich, with their choices beginning to assume more and more power,” Sandler says.
During the 80s one school popped up after another, the ringmaster often being a dealer, such as Mary Boone, Tony Shafrazi or Metro Pictures, and the Big Critics and their would-be successors were either lauding or railing against Art Stars ineffectually from the wings. “Schools” were dodo-dead and our present-day pluralism was emerging from the chrysalis.
“And in our own time power has very much shifted to collectors. Collector-dealers, such as Saatchi. Or dealer-collectors,” Sandler says. Who tend to trust well-compensated consultants over paid-by-the-word hacks. “I wonder whether any critic has that power any more. I don’t think so.”
Power has also, I might add, shifted back to a handful of apparently critic-proof artists.
James Truman, the chief executive and managing editor of Louise McBain’s arts media group, LTB, is making changes. Spoon, the Paris-based art and fashion glossy, has been squooshed. The magazine Modern Painters has moved from London to New York. The website, Artinfo, has been reshuffled. And this September sees the launch of a magazine with the no nonsense title, Culture and Travel.
As to Spoon, Truman doesn’t believe that art and fashion are soul-mates.
“One hopes that an artist starts with a reflection about history, culture, perhaps politics, society. Somebody who is creative in fashion probably starts with an idea about Audrey Hepburn.” He gives a small, explosive laugh.
And Modern Painters? “It was an anomaly in that even though it was published in London nearly half the circulation and more than half its advertising came from America. And although there are many great contemporary artists in Europe, the market is in New York, the scene is here.”
So to Culture and Travel. Truman was editorial director of Conde Nast for 11 years. How will the new title differ?
“We’re going to select the audience, 60,000 people, from proprietary lists that we’re compiling of art lovers, people who are very involved in culture, people who travel, rich people.” Another explosive laugh.
And the critical content? “It won’t be an art magazine in the sense of having reviews. It will work off the cultural calendar somewhat. But really it’s a travel guide for creative people. And those people who want to live a creative life for a few weeks.” anthony.haden-guest@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/hadenguest
