HIGH AND LOW: MODERN ART AND POPULAR CULTURE
“High and Low” looks at the interplay between popular culture and the fine arts. If that sounds like a major undertaking, its organizers–Kirk Varnedoe, director of MOMA’s department of painting and sculpture, and Adam Gopnik, a fiction editor and now the primary art critic for the New Yorker–seem to have been well aware of the challenge. So are their detractors. The attempt to define such concepts as “art” and “culture” and to make such distinctions as “fine” and “popular” raises Big Issues. And those who consider themselves cognoscenti feel it is their duty to see that such Big Issues are not taken lightly.
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The book is actually much more than a catalog–it offers a thorough analysis of issues of art and culture. A rich tour de force of historical research, it is possessed of such sweeping scope and fascinating detail that it belongs in every art library (at $29.95–paperback–it’s a worthwhile investment). Even an exhibition as expansive as this one–it includes about 250 pieces of painting and sculpture–has to pale by comparison. This should in no way suggest, however, that the exhibit should go unseen.
Work from the early 20th century cleverly indicates the impact of advertising on painting and sculpture. In his readymades Marcel Duchamp depended on context to establish their “fine art” status. He took such commercially produced objects as combs, bicycle wheels, perfume bottles, and porcelain urinals and altered and displayed them in such a manner that the public would accept them as works of art. Fernand Leger in his paintings appropriated stylized representations of machine parts, household objects, and store-window displays, incorporating them into his heroic renditions of modern urban life. In his dadaist object portraits Francis Picabia parodied low-grade commercial illustrations for utilitarian objects like lamps and cameras, translating them into sardonic comments on mechanomorphic imagery.
Though caricature is related to both graffiti and comics, it’s treated separately here. Magritte’s famous The Rape, in which a woman’s face is composed not of eyes, nose, and mouth but erotic body parts, is effectively compared to composite painting, a centuries-old technique of comic illustration. In composite work, portraits are revealed, on closer examination, to be composed of surprising elements–a face made out of vegetables perhaps, or a ram’s head that’s really several naked maidens amusingly intertwined. Caricature has a long tradition whose grotesque imagery can be traced in the distorted body parts of Picasso’s cubist paintings and sculpture and in Dubuffet’s later disturbing portraits.
“High and Low” is the first major exhibition MOMA has mounted since Kirk Varnedoe assumed his position there. Many of Varnedoe’s peers apparently see him as imperious and egotistical; perhaps he is, but his personal demeanor should have little bearing on his curatorial abilities. If he had the people skills of Mother Theresa, the New York art press would probably find reason to hate him. Power struggles and jealousy will probably always ensure a hypercritical media outlook on the efforts of MOMA personnel.
