Ross's first point, unfortunately, was made about thirty years too late. The art he mentions (Pollock, Warhol, et al) is part of art history now and not part of the contemporary art world. The modern era has passed - today the art world is wholly postmodern. Today, an artist can either choose to enter into the discourse of the art world or stay out of it. Entering into the discourse means producing work that draws on art history, cultural issues, critical theory, and the work of other artists. In today's world, art does not exist in a vacuum as a solitary work - there is a constant engagement between works of art, critics, curators, the art market, politics, art history... contemporary discourse can be seen as one giant work of art made of millions of individual pieces and people, constantly influencing its own evolution. Today's art world is a far cry from the straw man Mr. Ross tries to tear down in his speech - art has grown since the days of avant-garde modernism and become more self-reflective, historically aware, and much more diverse.
The diversity of today's art world is a point I would like to emphasize - when gallery-hopping through Chelsea last week, I saw figurative paintings, abstract paintings, installation art, monumental sculpture, photography, video installations, conceptual art, and some works that defy categorization. Today, there isn't one particular style that's "relevant." During the height of the modern era, abstract painting was the art form, and artists who didn't paint abstractly had trouble getting their work shown (at least in America). Today, major galleries show an incredible diversity of artists who are connected only by their participation in the give-and-take world of contemporary art.
Mr. Ross likens the history of modernism to the story of the emperor's new clothes - that the fear of being "uncultured" led people to believe that "bad" art was good. This assumes, of course, that modernism was very popular during its time, which may not be the case. Life Magazine ran a famous story on Jackson Pollock, with a line on the cover asking readers if he was the "greatest living painter." This was, of course, meant to be said with a wink and a smirk - the majority of people didn't get Pollock's work at all and thought of it as Mr. Ross does. Henry Geldzhaler, curator of American art at the Met, had to fight considerable resistance in 1969 to put on a retrospective of modern art at the museum, which up to that time had been a bastion of historical art. I also recall watching a Peanuts TV Special that satirized modern art, involving Charlie Brown going to a supermarket instead of an art museum on a field trip. Despite the efforts of critics such as Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, modern art didn't gain critical acceptance until the 1960's. When painter Mark Tobey won the top prize at the 1958 Venice Biennale, the major art publications didn't bother to mention it, despite the fact that Tobey was the first American artist to achieve such an honor since the 19th century. The art world eventually warmed up to the new style of art, but even today there are plenty of people who either dislike or fail to understand it.
Modern art wasn't a scam perpetuated by art dealers - modern artists had to fight tooth-and-nail to get shows and critical praise, and mainstream acceptance was a long time coming for them. A major problem faced by modern artists was, as Mr. Ross pointed out, the fact that their method of art making was far removed from traditional easel painting. Many people at the time thought that their art was a joke - after all, anybody can throw paint at a canvas, right?
This brings us to the issue of technique. According to Mr. Ross, a painting's quality can be judged by the artist's technical ability - composition, color, rendering, line, ad nauseum. The more "realistic" a painting looks, the better it is. In my view, the problem with realistic painting is the fact that we have cameras today. In fact, one can trace the origins of modern painting back to the invention of photography, the medium that was supposed to have spelled the death of painting. Painting had to adapt or die, and modern art was its adaptation to compete with photography. To stay relevant, painters had to do things with paint that only paint could do - something which Greenberg called "medium specificity."
Why couldn't academic painting compete with photography? Academic painting, as Mr. Ross points out, thrives on narrative and storytelling. In fact, up to the beginning of the 20th century, practically all painting involved some manner of narrative. Then, after the rise of modernism, painters began ejecting narrative elements in favor of formal ones, and abstraction was born. Why was narrative painting killed? Because painting is a horribly inefficient medium for transmitting a message. After the introduction of lithography, photography, and cinema, artists realized that they could reach massive audiences with these new media, while a painting, which is a singular object, can only be seen by a few (as Walter Benjamin pointed out in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"). If an artist truly wants to tell a story, why should he or she spend weeks to months laboring over a single painting when the story can be told more effectively to a wider audience in a different medium? Narrative painting served a function in the days before mass media, but today it is a relic of a lost age, and painters who cling to it tend to be thought of as amateurs despite their technical prowess.
There are, of course, excellent, relevant contemporary painters who use traditional techniques in their work - Vincent Desiderio, Odd Nerdrum, and John Currin to name just a few. The thing that makes these painters relevant is the fact that they use traditional techniques for a conceptual purpose rather than just by default. In today's art world, oil on canvas isn't the gold standard anymore - if an artist is going to use traditional materials, he or she should be able to justify their use conceptually. For example, John Currin uses oil paint and renaissance rendering techniques to draw attention to the art historical background in his paintings, and this makes his caricature-like distortions more shocking and ironic. The kind of painting Mr. Ross advocates is, barring conceptual justification and entry into contemporary discourse, completely irrelevant to today's art world.
In summary, I think that Mr. Ross is fighting a battle that's been over for three decades. He reminds me of the Japanese soldiers who refused to believe that the Second World War had ended and defended their remote positions for years following the official surrender. The world has moved on, and he is either ignorant of this fact or simply refuses to believe it. If it is ignorance, I think that Mr. Ross should look at relevant, contemporary painters who use traditional techniques for conceptual purposes. Everyone has their personal tastes, but I feel that the contemporary art world holds something for everyone, and it's simply a matter of finding it.
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