The Painted Word Quotes

“First you do everything possible to make sure your world is antibourgeois, that it defies bourgeois tastes, that it mystifies the mob, the public, that it outdistances the insensible middle-class multitudes by light-years of subtlety and intellect—and then, having succeeded admirably, you ask with a sense of See-what-I-mean? outrage: look, they don’t even buy our products! (Usually referred to as “quality art.”)”
― Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word

“Andy Warhol. Nothing is more bourgeois than to be afraid to look bourgeois”
― Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word

“The fact was that theories—Greenberg’s—about Pollock—were beginning to affect Pollock. Greenberg hadn’t created Pollock’s reputation, but he was its curator, custodian, brass polisher, and repairman, and he was terrific at it.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word

“All of them, artists and theorists, were talking as if their conscious aim was to create a totally immediate art, lucid, stripped of all the dreadful baggage of history, an art fully revealed, honest, as honest as the flat-out integral picture plane.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word

“Aesthetics is for the artists as ornithology is for the birds,”
― Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word

“There were brave and patriotic COLLECTORS who created a little flurry of activity on the Abstract Expressionist market in the late 1950s, but in general this type of painting was depreciating faster than a Pontiac Bonneville once it left the showroom. The resale market was a shambles. Without the museums to step in here and there, to buy in the name of history, Abstract Expressionism was becoming a real beached whale commercially. The deep-down mutter-to-myself truth was that the COLLECTORS, despite their fervent desire to be virtuous, had never been able to build up any gusto for Abstract Expressionism. Somehow that six-flight walk up the spiral staircase of Theory took the wind out of you.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word

“The ambitious artist, the artist who wanted Success, now had to do a bit of psychological double-tracking. Consciously he had to dedicate himself to the antibourgeois values of the cenacles of whatever sort, to bohemia, to the Bloomsbury life, the Left Bank life, the Lower Broadway Loft life, to the sacred squalor of it all... Not only that, he had to dedicate himself to the quirky
god Avant-Garde. He had to keep one devout eye peeled for the new edge on the blade of the wedge of the head on the latest pick thrust of the newest exploratory probe of this fall's avant-garde Breakthrough of the Century ... all this in order to make it, to be noticed, to be counted, within the community of artists themselves. What is more, he had to be sincere about it.

At the same time he had to keep his other eye cocked to see if anyone in le monde was watching. Have they noticed me yet? Have they even noticed the new style (that me and my friends are working in) Don't they even know about Tensionism (or Slice Art or Niho or Innerism or Dimensional Creamo or whatever)? (Hello, out there!) ... because as every artist knew in his heart of hearts, no matter how many times he tried to close his eyes and pretend otherwise (History! History!-where is thy salve?), Success was real only when it was success within le monde.

He could close his eyes and try to believe that all that mattered was that he knew his work was great ... and that other artists respected it ... and that History would surely record his achievements ... but deep
down he knew he was lying to himself. I want to be a Name, goddamn it!”
― Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word