just some high-brow name-calling

I did a little reading this morning on Tom Wolfe's art criticism thanks to a tip-off from a post on the First Things blog.

This was just a normal bit of self-education until I reached wikipedia's section on the book's critical reception:

"The Painted Word hit the art world like a really bad, MSG-headache-producing, Chinese lunch," wrote Rosalind E. Krauss in Partisan Review.^[5]By ridiculing the most respected members of the art world establishment, Wolfe had ensured that the reaction to his book would be negative. Many reviewers dismissed Wolfe as someone simply too ignorant of art to write about it.^[6][7]

Other critics responded with such similar vitriol and hostility that Wolfe said their response demonstrated that the art community only talked to each other. A review in The New Republic called Wolfe a fascist and compared him to the brain-washed assassin in the film The Manchurian Candidate. Wolfe was particularly amused, however, by a series of criticisms that resorted to "X-rated insults." An artist compared him to "A six-year-old at a pornographic movie; he can follow the action of the bodies but he can't comprehend the nuances." A critic in Time Magazine used the same image, but with an 11-year-old boy. A review in The New York Times Book Review used the image again, clarifying that the boy was a eunuch.^[8] The opening of the review in Partisan Review compared Wolfe to the star of the pornographic film Deep Throat. She viewed Wolfe's lack of a suggestion for what should replace modern art as similar in their ignorance to statements Linda Lovelace made about Deep Throat being a "kind of goof."^[5]

To be sure, there are counter arguments to be made in response to Wolfe's book, but the venom and disdain in these responses is kind of beyond me-- and almost hilarious. Let's not be so afraid of critique.