Miss Edith on Art, with help from Roger Kimball

Monday afternoon found Miss Edith, Notarius, and our dear, gorgeous, clever friend M. lolling about a café, drinking fancy drinks with foamed milk, reading our books. We were all taking the day off from work. It was lovely.
I voiced aloud, apropos of what I can no longer remember, my disgust with the whole idea of going to museums, of going to highbrow concerts. “I’m convinced,” I said, “that all these people who think they like going to look at art, who think they like going to listen to chamber music, are kidding themselves. They should be honest and admit they’re bored out of their skulls.”

Suddenly, as I write, I remember what inspired my vitriol. It was an “art installation” on a city street here. It was something I’d watched being put together, and initially just thought it was someone being sort of weird, entertaining himself with some bullshit or other. Which was stupid, but fine by me; it wasn’t hurting anyone, at least. Then I read about it in the local arts weekly. “I thought it was just bullshit, but it turns out, it’s Art,” I said, disgusted. M. laughed.

If piling up pieces of junk and some bricks in an old canal is Art, then I am Madame de Pompadour.

We headed home, to our fairly artless apartment, and M and Notarius discussed the question of Art and Music and true appreciation thereof while I stewed.

Here’s the thing. I am bored going to concerts and museums. Concerts are better: at least you’re sitting down, and you can space out, and sometimes you can sneak in a book to read while you’re there – yes, it’s rude, I realize, but better I read a book than scream in frustration; and would you prefer to have a quiet reader next to you or someone with a beeping squawking cell phone, anyway? But I refuse to believe that all these people who claim to be so moved by such things actually are. I look at a painting of almost any type and immediately wish I had something to read. There are, I believe, five paintings on God’s green earth that I actually enjoy looking at. I don’t own any of them. Hence, I don’t think about them much, and it’s just as well.
I can sort of deal with painting if it’s of something solid: a person; a flower; a landscape. I can be bored by that, but at least I understand why someone wanted to paint it.
Then there’s this stuff, I believe often termed “abstract” art, for which I really can’t find much excuse. Sure, some colors look particularly nice against each other – but then why not pretend that they’re matched in someone’s costume? Or located in a garden? Why just blotches and splotches, or strange angry-looking grids that don’t signify anything except possibly extreme skill with rulers? I just don’t get it. What’s worse, I think the people who say they get it are just really, really, really full of it.
And then there’s arty photography and film and sculpture. These media, in the last few decades, have evolved into media that are often supposed to be pushing some kind of envelope, with “highly charged” erotic content, or something. I don’t get it. Outside of the kind of prurient interest generally served perfectly well by pornographers, I don’t see a reason for making images of people getting anally reamed or whathaveyou. I’ve never understood how people earn degrees by producing images of stuff like this. My mind boggles when I think about it: this is a discipline? I understand how it’s bondage and discipline, but really, my friends: is it Art?
I say no, even taking into account that the model might be named Arthur.

Having spent maybe twenty minutes batting all this around in conversation, it was time, we realized, for M to hit the road, which he did, driving back to his drool-worthy loft in the North country. Notarius and I draped ourselves on our fine upholstered furniture and vegged out for the rest of the evening: quite pleasant.
The next day, I came home to find Notarius waiting for me, holding the latest issue of The New Criterion. “You’ve got to read this,” he said. “There’s an essay called Why the Art World is a Disaster.” “Oooo,” I said, “Hilton Kramer?” “No, Roger Kimball.”
“That’ll be fun,” I said, putting down my bag. I got dinner set up and when it was simmering nicely I fixed myself a drink and sat down to read.

I can’t really remember the last time I felt so vindicated. I found myself wanting to invite Roger Kimball to dinner, and said as much to Notarius. (Immediately, we began to dream up a guest list. Mr. Kimball, if you’re ever planning a trip to New Haven, please drop me a line.) The essay is not only completely correct, in my view, but it’s funny, and there’s nothing better than a bullshit-slashing essay on a subject I favor that also makes me laugh out loud, which Mr. Kimball did several times. He discusses almost every aspect of Art that drives me insane: the incoherence; the falsity of its being challenging or subversive (as Kimball says – I think we’ve reached a point where, frankly, anyone who says anything is really subversive is delusional); the idiotic language used by art people to discuss their product; and the way in which it’s all tied to financial matters at heart.
New Haven is about to host its annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas, a street festival which is wonderful for the city in so many ways that I’m not able to be against it. I think it’s just great that lots of people come to New Haven to talk about art and ideas. But I must admit that in all the years I’ve watched the festival come and go, not once have I attended an event in which I was truly interested; and the events I’ve attended, with the exception of seeing the Metropolitan Opera perform on the city Green (which was boring, but at least I could feel smug about attending, and I was allowed to eat takeout Chinese during the event), I have never seen so much arty bullshit concentrated in such a small space. The woman who now runs the event is charming and intelligent and all of my encounters with her have been lovely. But at heart, I know, I will never understand her. She believes in this stuff. She believes it’s really the most important thing in the world. Whereas I can only see it as a reason to get out my rapier. I think Roger Kimball would agree with me. If only the Arts and Ideas festival would book a speaking engagement with Roger Kimball; that’s an event I might actually pay to see.

I think M was right when he said that most people who look at Art or attend highbrow concerts or go to serious plays go not because they’re truly interested, but because attending is part of the package of being a certain kind of cultured, educated person. A nice person will want to see the latest production by Whatsit; a nice person will want to have attended a performace by the Whoosit String Quartet. Well, fine: then I’m not a nice person. Miss Edith will stay home with her Ramones records and her Liz Phair Cds and re-read Morningside Heights for the sixth time. Miss Edith likes to turn an elegant figure in public, but if it involves being utterly bored, and surrounded by fundamentally dishonest pompous gits, she’ll be just as happy at home. I may be pompous, but at least I’m honest about it.