Interior of the 1913 Armory Show
To the Editors:
It mystifies me that, continuing under the editorship of Roger Kimball as previously under that of Hilton Kramer, The New Criterion persists in intermittently admiring in the visual arts the very decline and fall of culture that it so well and rightly militates against in government, politics, theater, music, and the media. Not seven pages after the editor, in his obituary βJacques Barzun, 1907β2012β (The New Criterion, December 2012), gives with one hand by approving of Jacques Barzunβs apt indictment of the modern art sceneββ βWhen people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadentβ β and suffers βa progressive loss of resistance to humbugββJames Panero takes away with the other hand in a review that sets up the Armory Show (βThe Armory Show at 100β) as embodying the work of βlike-minded souls who helped nurture and propagate a renewed vision for culture.β βRenewed vision for cultureβ? Whom is he kidding? The Armory Show itself was the beginning of that end of art of which even The New Criterion disapproves.
Though Panero seconds Barzun in objecting to the present-day βprofessionalized museum class [that] dictates the story of art to an increasingly passive public,β he praises the βenergyβ of the Armory Show, which consisted of what he calls a βresurgence in art [that captured] the vital spirit of the timesβ in revolt against βthe dry bones of a dead art.β He