[Steven Sweeney]

Anyone wishing to see some sparks fly over this issue should go to this site's home page and access Art Renewal Center Chairman Fred Ross' speech on the subject of modernism's place in art history.

Art is, of course, not the only venue in which the 20th Century ousted, challenged or crippled longstanding tradition. For example, we've all read clumsily managed minimalist fiction, obscure poetry laden with self-referential symbolism, superficial pieces meant to be merely provocative rather than entertaining or edifying.

It seems that the "publish or perish" politics of academia, paradoxically both internecine and incestuous, contributed greatly to the momentum of such curious and confusing trends during the past century. "I'll write a glowing blurb for your little chapbook and come to your reading, if you'll do the same for me." Suddenly there are two critically acclaimed publications that no one will ever have read, and then four, sixteen, sixty-four, until more traditional works, the "standards" of literature, are displaced by the psychology of protocol and the physics of shelf space.

And yet, even as a serious realistic painter (hence my screen name!), there is heresy in my soul. I am already growing weary of the stridency of calls to arms, to abandon, to spurn, to deride modernism and pay attention only to "real" painting. I believe that real painting can speak for itself -- indeed, that it MUST speak for itself. (Okay, a few wealthy patrons don't hurt to spread the message.)

I usually give contemporary art museums a miss and head for the "Mets", but I consider it a matter of personal taste. Though my tastes are somewhat eclectic and I don't mind taking time to visit the MOMAs or the Guggenheims, it's perhaps because I know I won't use up much time there. One realist painter, asked if the elephant-dung medium of recent notoriety was what modernism had sunk to, replied, "No, that's what it's always been." If I'd never heard of, say, Jackson Pollock, my appreciation for art would be unchanged -- and yet, with one exception. I sat quite mesmerized, and more than once, in front of his "Blue Poles" drip painting at the National Gallery in Australia, and I'm happy to have been able to do so. (Its valuation at over $40 million is the least of things interesting about it.) I have been similarly if rarely affected by other contemporary pieces. Now Pollock is quoted as having said, "When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing," and, despite my appreciation for "Blue Poles," most people might respond, "Well, that's the way it looks, too!"

On the other hand, I'm able to walk rather quickly past plenty of the "old Master" works in a large collection. If I don't care for a piece, then it doesn't matter to me, either, who painted it or when. Sometimes I'll study it simply to discern what it is that I don't like about it. But I find it just as offensive and arrogant to have every classical work of art crammed down my throat simply because of its pedigree and provenance, as it is has been to have contemporary work offered with similar insistence, even vehemence, for the opposite and other reasons.

I say, go to your studio and paint, paint what you wish to paint, and do it at the highest level of excellence of which you're capable. Learn as you go, open to ideas old and new. And then let your work speak for itself. Competent, well crafted, enchanting work has its own voice. Let those who will, hear it.

I'm told that this is a good time to get into realistic work, because -- these words are actually used -- "the bar is so low," owing to the influence of modernism. But when I look at the offerings on this and other sites, at the dozens and hundreds of web displays, at gallery exhibitions domestic and foreign, I know that traditions of excellence in realism are far from dead. If the bar was once low, it's certainly gotten higher, fast.

Time to quit making speeches and go to work!

Steven