<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Re: the Butler did it (was cheap computers)</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <TT>Hello everyone, Chuck Grimes writes to Kelley: </TT><TT>But in any case, I don't have an asethetic theory. I gave up on them a long time ago because they were written by people who knew exactly nothing about making art. Doyle mentioned Rosaline Krauss who used to write regularly for the old Artforum. She was one of a handfull of critics who had interesting and connected things to say about art at the time--up to about the mid-Seventies. But the intellectual and asethetic quality of the mag evaporated when its managing editor Copland(?) left. Other writers I remember were Robert Pincus-Witten(?) and Lucy Lippard. They were all trying to develop a new style of criticism that superceeded their predecessors and started to make some serious progress. Then I don't know what happened. They vanished, the mag became an imitation of itself. It was on autopilot by the end of the Seventies, just in time for the Reagan era. Doyle I occasionally pick up Artforum to see if Arthur C. Danto has anything to say.  He is a philosopher, and an art critic.  So his writing often has this unusual hit on pictures because Danto is (I assume) well informed about philosophy, and otherwise not well tied into current aesthetic theory. Doyle I have an aesthetic theory, realism.  Realism has its charms if one is concerned to understand what is going on in this class system.  I mean there are subjects worth being realistic about.  Lots of it.  But aside from the thought there is a lot to say, I think having a theory is important.  It means something here on LBO for instance.  You can advance Kelleyšs understanding which she is asking for.  Or others. Chuck The arts are cultural canaries and it doesn't take much to kill them off--a cold wind is about all that's needed. The rich bourgeois who actually support the arts just have to change their taste or their interest or feel slightly threatened or insulted and that is it--feet up at the bottom of the cage. Doyle That is one of the funniest images of artists I have seen in a while.  Lying on a newspaper, or toilet paper at the bottom of a cage feet in the air. Chuck What really disappears is the sense of community that composes a conceptual audience and provides the context for doing art. It is the other half of the cultural dialogue. That is what vanished. But the practice remains in a kind of pointless limbo, like the street sax player at rush hour serenading to no one. Doyle Well actually people who are marginalized have a sense of community, but they donšt have the means to have a voice that speaks for their experience.  I really think in this instance that Postmodernist are doing something you donšt give them credit for.  They arenšt evaporated into a pointless limbo.  They want to say something right now.  Maybe it isnšt something I feel inclined to believe, but there are currents in American culture such as the Post Modernist which are trying very hard to do something. Jim Heartfield replies to Chuck Grimes: I think this is quite well documented, unlike the second gunman. The CIA funded abstract expressionism, as a counterweight to socialist realism. Greenberg was one of those Cold War liberals who was allotted the task of promoting this indigenous American modernism. I don't say that abstract expressionism was necessarily bad for that reason (though in my opinion it was a fairly retrograde movement) but it was indeed sponsored by the CIA. Care to tell me otherwise? -- Jim heartfield Doyle Whether or not some individuals were employed by the CIA canšt explain why the American Art World embraced AE like it did.  Greenberg canšt be held responsible for currents that formed then throughout the U.S. If anything the subsequent fall from influence that Greenberg experienced and that Krauss documents shows how little use hiring Greenberg was to Cold War strategies.  There is no doubt that painterly realism was challenged by the post war Abstract movement, but that was happening I think because of other things besides ideology.  Photographs, movies, how can painters compete in depicting reality?  Was Picasso retrograde?  What was Picasso doing since he was not a realist?  I know Picasso sometimes said he was a realist, but obviously his work is abstract.  Government and capitalist can't organize these things that cleverly.  That is beyond their abilities. Regards, Doyle Saylor   </TT> </BODY> </HTML>