C.B. Murphy  .:. Writer

I’ve seen Kitaj paintings before. I think before I was seriously painting I found them interesting. I even remember marking him down once on a sheet of paper along with Anselm Keifer–people to look up. What a great name, too.
As my own paintings have evolved, the only “modern” artist (besides Magritte, of course) I have allowed “into the family” has been Neo Rauch.

Yesterday I read in THE ECONOMIST that R. B. Kitaj died. At first, I was only mildly interested but nevertheless read the obit. Then it hit me. The story of the “1994 Tate Gallery disaster”–this was something! Without knowing much about it (so far), this is what I know:
(1) Kitaj is considered “illustrative” which means “bad” or “decorative” to many critics;
(2) Kitaj moved around stylistically, realism, surrealism, other forms, this also irritates critics who like people to be stylistically unique, evolving, in a word comprehensible. The idea that artists, perhaps whimsically, move around and try things goes against the image of “serious/obsessed” that critics like. Stylistic whimsy is considered “freshman in art school” sort of work, lost, sans personality, even immature;
(3) The critics finally got an opportunity rather late in Kitaj’s successful career to savage him and they did so with a vengeance at the Tate Gallery show in London in 1994. The shock was so great to Kitaj that he claimed his second wife died (heart attack?) from the impact of all the negativity;
(4) I think it was about this time that Kitaj got more serious about identifying himself as a Jew and even casting the criticism as anti-Semitic and also moved to the United States (ostensibly to punish London).

I should also say I am reading Roger Kimball’s RAPE OF THE MASTERS, and it all sort of fits together. These things:
1. Art criticism in our time does not service the artist or the appreciator. It services the academics and the museums. It has attempted to make art something that requires advanced degrees to understand (”decode texts”) and the “person in the street” is now an idiot, though still pandered to occasionally by blockbuster shows (Picasso, Impressionists, even Georgia O’Keefe and Frida Kahlo) that pay the rent.
2. Art as a practical craft, enjoyable hobby, pleasurable activity (collecting and making) has been pretty much lost. Perhaps lost is not the right word (there still thousands of art centers all over the country) but completely marginalized and shunted away from “serious” art. Now, sadly the worlds are separated, probably permanently.
3. This is why the average person feels intimidated to buy original art (as opposed to poster, reproductions or even decorator art) and hang it on their walls. If they find the art for sale it’s probably by an amateur (maybe at an art fair?) and the only way to like it AND still hold their head up as a half-way educated person is to be quite aggressive about liking it, knowing full well that the serious art world will not like or approve of this piece. I think the growth of “lowbrow” art is largely fueled by this combination of frustration and anger and sheer love of images. It’s partly, too, why I think magazines like JUXTAPOZ have an aggressive “street” veneer as if they have to be tough (pretending not to have stepped foot in a college for example) and ‘outsider’ in their way.
4. I think the growth of Outsider Art, too, as a specialty has to do with this divorce of the average person’s taste from the abstruse (”globally concerned”) art of say the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis). Though outsider art gallery owners, collector and appreciators can sound quite pedantic (see their excruciating efforts to define terms and castigate posers) the work they champion for the most part is accessible: narrative, quasi-narrative or surreal, often with an interesting technique. Rarely does a piece of outsider art need an explanation of why you should like it. Certainly some is revered more than another, and the “bio” of the artist matters (best when the artist is mentally disabled and from a marginalized race), but you would rarely be looking at a pile of crap/nonsense and have someone telling you why this crap/nonsense is sooooo important.
5. Kitaj got mugged by the art critic establishment, fierce as they were to “put him in his place.” How dare he try to be important and international when he was JUST a painter, figurative besides. He didn’t even have the torturous story of Francis Bacon (ah, the agonized homosexual popes imprisoned with sides of beef!) to make it all the more palatable. What would happen at the thousands of art schools if Kitaj was considered “important” — god forbid people might even start painting still lives with rabbits again. Where would we be then?– the critic worries.