Traditionalist claims that modern art could just as well be replaced by a “paint-throwing chimp”

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Jed Dougherty points me to this opinion piece by Jacqueline Stevens, a professor of art at Northwestern University, who writes:

Artists are defensive these days because in May the House passed an amendment to a bill eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts. Colleagues, especially those who have received N.E.A. grants, will loathe me for saying this, but just this once I’m sympathetic with the anti-intellectual Republicans behind this amendment. Why? The bill incited a national conversation about a subject that has troubled me for decades: the government — disproportionately — supports art that I do not like.

Actually, just about nobody likes modern art. All those soup cans—what’s that all about? The stuff they have in museums nowadays, my 4-year-old could do better than that. Two-thirds of so-called modern artists are drunk and two-thirds are frauds. And, no, I didn’t get my math wrong—there’s just a lot of overlap among these categories!

It’s an open secret in my discipline: in terms of art that I like (the field’s benchmark for what counts as art), my colleagues have failed spectacularly and wasted colossal amounts of time and money. The most obvious example may be artists’ insistence, during the cold war, that Abstract Expressionism was not a complete and utter joke. We know how that turned out.

Art has also failed miserably at its secondary goal of protecting us from terrorism. Did any prominent N.E.A.-financed researchers predict that an organization like Al Qaeda would change global and domestic politics for at least a generation? Nope. Or that the Arab Spring would overthrow leaders in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia? No, again.

How do we know that these examples aren’t atypical cherries picked by a retro salon-style artist munching sour grapes? Because in the 1980s, the art historian Philip E. Tetlock began systematically quizzing 284 art experts — most of whom were fine arts Ph.D.’s — on dozens of basic questions, like whether a Motherwell would sell better than a Rauchenberg, when a prominent art movement would diffuse, and what exactly was the point of that “Piss Christ” painting that everybody was talking about a few years ago. His book “Expert Art Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” won the American Fine Arts Association’s prize for the best book published on the arts.

Professor Tetlock’s main finding? Chimps randomly throwing paint at a canvas would have done almost as well as the experts.

Actually, I’d go further and say that a well-trained chimp could do better than the average installation in any given Whitney Biennial.

These results wouldn’t surprise Karl Popper, whose 1934 book “The Logic of Scientific Discovery” remains the cornerstone of the artistic method. Yet Mr. Popper himself scoffed at the pretensions of the arts. As Popper put it: “My four-year-old could paint better than that Picasso guy. I could draw ugly women with both their eyes on the same side of their face too. I just don’t do it because it’s so stupid. Sure, Picasso gets the babes, but in the long run he is sooooooo falsified.”

OK, Popper sounds better in the original German. My point is: Government can — and should — assist artists, especially those like me who use history and theory to explain shifting artistic contexts, challenge our intuitions and help us see beyond daily newspaper headlines.

But, please, none of this modern-art stuff. Everything was just fine in the 1870s before those newfangled Impressionists started in with all their gimmicks.

I disagree with Prof. Stevens—somewhat. I too am less than impressed by Jackson Pollock and am even less of a fan of the Abstract Impressionists. On the other hand, I love Cezanne, Van Gogh, Picasso, etc., and I think Stevens went way over the top in wanting to stop progress at 1870.

Also, for full disclosure, I should admit that I applied for a job at at the Northwestern University art department in 1996 and got turned down. Actually, it was worse than that—they not only dinged me, they also refused to reimburse all my travel expenses. So maybe I’m just bitter.

P.S. If you’re confused, see here for the explanation. I wasn’t trying to confuse anyone here, I was just trying to follow the policy of mocking rather than feeding a troll. More serious responses appear here and here at the sister blog.

28 thoughts on “Traditionalist claims that modern art could just as well be replaced by a “paint-throwing chimp””

    • Yes, some of us who aren’t political scientists would have benefited from a clue.

      But getting to that forecasting point: don’t underestimate those chimps. In practical forecasting, it’s often difficult to beat naive forecasting methods.

  4. The NYT article you link to does not contain the passages you cut and paste. It’s entitled “Political Scientists Are Lousy Forecasters.”

    Excert: “In the 1980s, the political psychologist Philip E. Tetlock began systematically quizzing 284 political experts — most of whom were political science Ph.D.’s — on dozens of basic questions …. Professor Tetlock’s main finding? Chimps randomly throwing darts at the possible outcomes would have done almost as well as the experts.”

    • Bill:

      I wondered about that myself, but I assumed the writer was just trying to make a rhetorical point. In any case, if you want the full story, you can just google the sentence, “Picasso gets the babes, but in the long run he is sooooooo falsified.”

      • I don’t understand this comment, Andrew. I googled the phrase and just found another version of your article (different blog). How is it making a rhetorical point to misname a photograph as a painting?

        Maybe I am thick, but it isn’t obvious to me.

        • Bill:

          Let me explain. Someone pointed me to an op-ed written by a political scientist named Jacqueline Stevens attacking quantitative political science. Stevens’s op-ed seemed to me to be troll-like: that is, it seemed to be constructed in a way to draw attention to itself by the simple expedient of pissing people of. It is sometimes said that the proper response to a troll is to mock rather than to take it seriously (“Please do not feed the trolls”). This blog post was my attempt to mock. In adapting Stevens’s actual op-ed to the art context, I purposely threw in ignorant art-related statements such as the Piss Christ reference, just to give the impression of someone who vaguely hates modern art. I only wish I’d thrown in a Thomas Kincade reference as well.

        • Actually, my understanding of “Please do not feed the trolls” is “Ignore the troll”. The troll wants attention, either positive or negative, and even by mocking the troll, you are rewarding the troll with attention.

        • Andrew, do you mean that when you wrote: ” Jacqueline Stevens, a professor of art at Northwestern University, who writes:”, you followed it by something that you wrote, not something that Stevens wrote?

        • Bill:

          You can click through the link to see all. Jacqueline Stevens is a professor of political science who wrote an op-ed about political science. I thought it would be amusing to change the poli sci references to art references. Other than that, I think I captured her argument pretty well!

        • Andrew, I didn’t interpret it that way. When an academic of integrity, such as you, writes that so-and-so wrote such-and-such, I think that they are telling me the truth. I am disappointed.

        • I got the joke Andrew and even laughed when you said Popper was the cornerstone of the artistic method. So I don’t think the post was anymore disappointing than normal.

          Since according to Stevens “Research aimed at political prediction is doomed to fail”, I think we can define Political Science thus:

          Political Science is the art of throwing the darts from the monkey cage.

  6. Hi Andrew,

    I’m surprised a bit you’re not a Pollock fan. Have you seen much of his work in person? Until I saw his actual canvases, I had no idea they were so HUGE. The effect in much different than on paper or a small computer screen. It wasn’t until I stood in front of one of his pieces in all its monstrous glory that it finally clicked.

    R

    PS: The picasso dig is completely ridiculous. He has some really masterful early realist work like ‘First Communion: http://www.join2day.net/abc/P/picasso/picasso172.JPG. It’s ridiculous to think that he painted the way he did for lack of skill. He mastered the techniques and styles that came before and then went searching beyond. That is all.

    • Robert:

      I have to admit that Pollock has never impressed me but I’ll give it a try next time I’m at Moma. Picasso I love, though. Especially the early stuff.

  8. So… you’re saying that political science is more of an art than a science? Maybe it should be called “political art” instead. It sounds sexier, too.

  11. One of the most pointless things one can conceive of arguing about is determining if something is art or not. Are there self conscious fakes? Of course. Are there sincere artists who just cannot turn the soul? Of course. Are there people who pretend to
    like certain art but do not? Yes. But many people love a variety of styles and artists. Why isn’t it sufficient to just let people enjoy, pretend to enjoy, or not enjoy what they are looking at?

    Who cares that some people like or do not like Jackson Pollack? As far as many of Picasso’s 5 minute drawings are concerned, they were simply the equivalent of autographs. What is wrong with that? He still created great works.

    Having said that, not a single tax dollar should subsidize art—including charitable deductions. My guess is that is what is behind these heated debates—-Competing for dollars.

  12. I got confused when the conversation abruptly swerved into preventing terrorism, and I wasn’t sure how Popper could be construed as the basis for the ‘artistic method’. But apart from that, I was sorely disappointed when it turned out that this was satire, because it firmly satisfied my confirmation bias on modern art (which I *do* think is pretty much a complete write-off…)

  13. I’d read the Op-Ed in the paper earlier in the day, and personally, I was just waiting to see what Andrew would make of it. In my opinion, this piece was about the perfect response. I laughed, anyway. But maybe I have no taste in art.

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