Embattled Critic: Views on Modern Art

by John Edwin Canady

Book by Canady, John Edwin

Genres: Art

238 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

Reviews

[Alex Wexelman · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first, I wrote off John Canaday, New York Times art critic (1959 - 1976) as a conservative. What was he doing railing against Abstract Expressionism? Why would he write that the school, "allows exceptional tolerance for incompetence and deception"? These were fighting words. He set off a flurry and nearly 50 leading artists, editors, publishers, etc signed a letter questioning the author's intent, ultimately labeling him an "agitator." I was in agreement. The first section of Embattled Critic: Views on Modern Art (1962), which is split into four sections and an appendix, is all negative views on modern art. I was tempted to put the book down. Canaday not only seemed out of step, but he appeared to dislike art more generally. I didn't see what business this man had writing about a topic he clearly disdained. But I stuck it through for the remaining three sections in which he argues in favor, on the whole, of artists and movements that move him and his personality comes out like a shy rabbit from its hole in the ground. This is when he did what a true critic must do: win me over; convince me of his worldview. Canaday writes for an audience enthusiastic about art from a place of expert knowledge. He never talks down to us. He always calmly and clearly lays out his argument with humor and patience. He might not love everything. But, by Jove, who wants anything to do with a critic who does? By the end of the book, I was more learned than when I began. And more than that, in the appendix, in which Canaday reprints letters in response to the roundtable letter decrying him, I found myself in agreeance with each that defended him. As the final letter stated, "Anyone who can make so many distinguished people so angry must be doing a good job." This highly readable and intelligent collection of art criticism circa 1959 - 1962 is an excellent inclusion in the canon of art writing.

[Giovanni García-Fenech · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoy reading conservative art critics, even if I don't agree with them. Hilton Kramer, Jed Perl, and Robert Hughes, to name three prominent ones, have served as a ballast against the faddishness of the art world, and wrote (and continue to write, in Perl's case) insightfully about what they believed. Alas, the late New York Times critic John Canaday doesn't hold a candle to them.

Canaday's limitations are very apparent, and while I might agree with some of his assessments about the lesser lights of Abstract Expressionism, it's clear that he never understood the movement. He never grasps that abstraction could be of more than formal interest. Instead, Canaday needed to see the subject represented. So where he knocks Mark Rothko or Franz Kline, he holds up histrionic "image of man" artists such as Antonio Saura, James Kearns, and Leonard Baskin, none of whom have dated well.

To add insult to injury, his hamfisted attempts at humor (including not one but two articles about fictional artists he thinks represent the folly of the era) in comparison make Garrison Keillor sound like an edgy alternative comic.

[Juan Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some people called John Canaday a conservative critic because he did not embrace the trends moved by fashion and art dealers in the sixties and seventies. I`d still found his writings refreshing and powerful because of his independence and thoughtful criticism. He was not an emotional art critic, neither was he a cold thinker. His work is balanced, healthy and deeply necessary in the chaotic work left by modernism and its sequels. Love his courage, and uncompromised integrity. It is still a role model for me as an art critic who was informed, analytic, and profoundly sensitive to art and distrustful of the art market and the curatorial rhetoric.