Seven Red

For Monday morning hilarity, I suggest a reading of Stanley Fish’s crotchetiest column yet, in which he complains about not being invited to the VIP opening for the painfully 80′s pomo New Museum, then proceeds to thrash the exhibits (and their purported underlying aesthetic) soundly. From Fish’s description, you’d think the New Museum was stocked with works by that long forgotten artist, Mallory’s boyfriend Nick from Family Ties. I heard this joke already, in other words, and it involved Alex P. Keaton. But when a critic writes “you can’t make this stuff up” about your exhibit description, you know you’ve had your clock cleaned but good.

Fish’s more curious argument is that he prefers those depth pieces that are seemingly divorced from the politics of the day, as opposed to all this surface (glitz) that presumes itself to be actively tied to an outside, which is to say, contemporary politics, the agora rather than the interior spaces of the oikus. I suppose that’s fine, but I don’t see any necessary connection between depth and home, anymore than I see a connection between the surface and the agora. Indeed, I thought the last 40+ years of cultural criticism was doing a pretty good job of upending precisely these distinctions. And I’m pretty sure Stanley Fish knows that. Better to let the readers of the New York Times nod along, serious and amused, I guess. One aesthetic then, not two, but one aesthetic folded quite deviously, folds upon folds. And maybe we’re closest to the political when we’re farthest from the agora?

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