Hilton Kramer, 1928-2012

RIP.
I disagreed with most of his critiques but understood his bitterness as a reaction to what he saw as the "destruction" of high art:

If there is something appealing in the very openness of this postmodernist art scene, there is also something dismaying in it, too. For it reminds us that ours is now a culture without a focus or a center...Perhaps we know too much about art to believe in the absolute efficacy of any single style or tradition. Are we condemned, then, in the art of the [he says '"the 1980s" here, but it applies well and full now], to remain in a perpetual whirl of countervailing and contradictory styles and attitudes? I think we probably are. This eager embrace of art of every persuasion seems to suit us. It satisfies our hearty new appetite for aesthetic experience while requiring nothing from us in the way of commitment or belief.

posted by CAC at 11:11 AM

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