Adieu to the Avant-Garde

As the artistic regime shifts, realism, rhyme, and representation make a comback.

Kanchan Limaye from the July 1997 issue

(Page 3 of 6)

One day in 1994, after a lecture at The Art Students' League in New York, several Realist artists held a meeting to discuss the possibility of staging a protest outside the Whitney. There, poet Feirstein met Realist painter Steven Assael. After listening to the proceedings, Feirstein told Assael that they shared some key beliefs, especially the value of technique and the belief that subject matter should transcend the artist. That meeting began what has become a continuing association between the poets and the painters.

Feirstein knew something about demonstrating, and he and his wife helped Assael organize the Whitney protest. About 40 Realist artists have begun meeting each weekend in Hoboken, New Jersey, to hammer out group goals.

The poets too have been public in their assault on orthodoxy. Last December, for example, Bruce Bawer, a poet and essayist known for his advocacy of family-values gay domesticity, and a leader in the gay-moderate movement, stood before some 40 New York literati, college students, and passers-by in the Chelsea branch of Barnes & Noble. They'd gathered for a reading to celebrate the publication of Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism. Fifty copies of the scarlet book punctuated the shelf behind Bawer, like pop icons in a Warhol painting. Standing at the podium, Bawer said, "When I was in grad school in the early '80s, formal verse wasn't allowed, wasn't done. I kept writing them privately and stashing them away somewhere." His smile betrayed a guilty glee.

In the back of the crowd sat young political analyst and novelist Michael Lind. Late of The New Yorker, Lind personifies why the old distinction between left-wing avant-gardists and right-wing classicists is becoming useless. In his recent book, Up From Conservatism, he describes his political disillusionment with the right and his migration toward the left. But Lind is also a closet narrative poet--Houghton Mifflin published his first epic poem, The Alamo, in March. By writing an epic, Lind challenges the assumption that classicism is a right-wing phenomenon.

In the afterword to The Alamo, Lind writes, "formerly insurgent Modernism had become the intolerant establishment, and a prejudice against not only epic, but any kind of coherent narrative verse, was the orthodoxy in the academy, publishing, and the prestige press." He points out that in recent years, poets like Vikram Seth (whose book-length poem The Golden Gate was a bestseller in England), Frederick Turner, Dana Gioia, Mark Jarman, David Mason, Robert McDowell, and others who form the New Narrative movement, have broken through the publishing barrier.

Lind says that he, like others, mourns what he sees as the contrast between the robustness of American vernacular culture and the preciosity of Atlantic seaboard literati and academics. He considers writing an epic in colloquial language as an attempt to bridge the gap between the intelligentsia and the larger public--in this sense, it is a response to Turner's call-to-arms for the artists of the future.

As a proponent of "national liberalism," Lind is one more example of the movement's political heterogeneity. When pressed about their political views, most of the artists resist affiliating themselves with any group. Lind admires Truman and Johnson; poet Sydney Lea says he is a Southern Democrat, or a conservative uncomfortable with some conservative views. Fred Feirstein bemoans the loss of idealism and optimism of the Kennedy era. Tom Disch was for years a contributor to the left-wing opinion magazine, The Nation. Tom Wolfe has been known to attend neo-conservative fundraisers, but satirizes both North Carolina gay-bashers and news media liberals in his latest novella, Ambush at Fort Bragg. De Kenessey, poet Dana Gioia, and Turner say they see no heroes on the left or the right.

"The right's loony to try and make cultural values policy, but I don't trust the government as much as Mike Lind," says Gioia. He continues, "Politics has become a dreary swamp. The right and left are no longer useful concepts."

De Kenessey says, "Most people in this movement are on some level outside the current mainstream. That's what we have in common politically."

Indeed, these artists' unwillingness to align themselves politically with either the left or the right has left them vulnerable to having both politics and motives imputed to them by those who dismiss their work.

"What movement?!" demands David Ross, director of the Whitney, when asked about the Realists in a telephone interview. "There's no such thing!" When reminded that at least 200 Realist artists demonstrated outside the Whitney less than 18 months earlier, he backtracks. "I've always had respect for the artist's plight," he says of the protest. "We even gave them an electric outlet for their equipment."

Ross expresses great skepticism of the contemporary Realists. "That sort of hackneyed academic painting takes an enormous amount of talent and work," he says. "But to go back to copying Leonardo is not art."

He continues: "I admire them just like I admire people that can sing beautifully. It's a real gift. But that alone doesn't make you a great artist." His voice rises, sounding increasingly agitated. "They're old-fashioned, totally out of touch with the issues of the day. I'm interested in art that's wrestling with the history of ideas, and they fail to deal with it! We've had two major world wars, the worst genocides in world history, and many other events that they ignore."

Ross says he has not seen any of Steven Assael's work, but he tells a reporter in her early 20s, "I used to be just like you when I was your age. I had the same questions about art that you do. Listen, you shouldn't be interested in these people. They're just a bunch of crypto-Nazi conservative bullshitters. They're feeding you a line of bullshit! We just had a great conference with Asian-American artists who were concerned with issues of representation at the Whitney. Do a story on that."

When asked to respond to the contention of many contemporary Realists that the Whitney's brand of avant-garde art lacks spirituality, Ross becomes enraged. "I'm sick of hearing these Realists say their work is `affirming'! It's not affirming, it's sappy! Art isn't about making pretty pictures to put in people's homes," he says. "They're rebelling against the age of cynicism? Well, it's not cynicism! It's smartness! It's lack of naivete!" By this point, Ross's voice is shaking with anger. "They think they're special? Well, they are special. If they get a show of their own, great. I'm eager to see what it is, and then we can have a real dialogue," Ross says. "Let them put on their own show. Then I'll accept that there's a movement."