USIH Review: Lacy on Cándida Smith

Review of Richard Cándida Smith’s The Modern Moves West: California Artists and Democratic Culture in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). ISBN 978-0-8122-4188-4. 252 pages.

Review by Tim Lacy
University of Illinois at Chicago
April 2010


Thinking Through Modern Art


     In The Modern Moves West, Berkeley Professor Richard Cándida Smith tackles the intellectual and cultural history of modern art in California. He explores aesthetic theory, the core-periphery tension in the institutional art world, art education, and the potentially explosive intersections of art and politics. By focusing on visual, stationary media in the work of Sam Rodia, Jay DeFeo, Wally Hedrick, Noah Purifoy, Marcos Ramírez ERRE, and Daniel Joseph Martínez, Cándida Smith presents an incredibly rich look at California’s pantheon of twentieth-century modern artists.

     To read this book is to enter a world where a particular community used painting, sculpture, and assemblage art to grapple with the acids and innovations of modernity. In relation to California and the American West, Patricia Nelson Limerick’s notion of a “the legacy of conquest” is implicitly at work in Cándida Smith’s narrative. California is indeed a land of jostling due to internal migration, immigration, and racial politics.[1] But this book concentrates on explaining how modern art, and its postmodern successors, assisted in bringing these conflicting cultural visions together under a democratic aesthetic as the twentieth century progressed.

     The Modern Moves West is a recent addition to Penn Press’s new series, “The Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America,” edited by Casey Nelson Blake. That series welcomes manuscripts “in architecture and the visual arts or music, dance, theater, and literature.” Thus far the visual arts seem prominent, but there are only six books in the series.[2] If Cándida Smith’s contribution is indicative of the series on the whole, then that endeavor is intent on underscoring how art enriches America’s intellectual life, and how all of this comes together to foster (or hamper) democracy.

     In his introduction, Cándida Smith offers a number of formulations of his thesis in relation to the themes outlined above. I believe, however, that the following passages—one longish and the other succinct—best express his argument. Both also provide a sampling of the author’s style:

(1) “The challenges inherent to modern life in California initially developed along different lines from much of the rest of the world. Its isolation, its relative prosperity, and the ascendancy of middle-class democracy fostered widespread faith, perhaps objectively an illusion but nonetheless powerful in its subjective consequences, that a new world culture was in the process of emerging there. It would be a culture that synthesized a broad variety of cultural traditions, and it would be a culture developed by both men and women. It would be a culture where the ideal of creating something new while building on the achievements of their heritage would take roots and guide the cultural activity of the future. …Freed from limiting if identity-giving geographic, family, and class roots, many during the post-war boom had to create their own lives in a complex world that was often indifferent, if not openly hostile or derisive. The ultimate universal that the arts in California proposed was the ability of each individual to define the meaning of his or her own existence in the relative isolation a new society provided, an isolation that involved perhaps a callous indifference.” (p. 57)

(2) “The stories in the previous chapters suggest the difficulty of the process by which artists in the state developed a distinctive regional culture that inevitably reflected the ambiguities of their own social position. …California cultural life took its particular shape as members of marginalized groups staked their claim to interpret modern life” (p. 209).

     The second comes from Cándida Smith’s conclusion. By the end of the book one is most impressed with the ways that members of marginalized groups, such as African-American (Betye Saar and Purifoy) and Mexican-American (ERRE and Martínez) artists, navigated what was called the “art as knowledge” terrain. They worked within the modern art tradition while also maintaining a political-cultural voice that spoke to race and ethnic relations. These artists built a new “third space” from which one might view both his or herself and the surrounding world (p. 207). They hoped to change the future by using art to re-view the present.

     While a baseline interest in art and artists might move you to pick up The Modern Moves West, an ongoing fascination with the notion of democratic culture—and its associated intellectual life—drove my reading. A short way into the book, however, I perceived a contradiction: how could a movement (i.e. modern art) that promoted individual expression, sold society on the beautiful inaccessibility of abstraction, and pushed the subjective nature of knowledge, actually buttress an accessible, participatory, shared democratic culture?  And, in Cándida Smith’s case, how does California’s regional, peripheral modernism help answer to this question?

     The author’s narrative builds toward a present where art contributes to a healthy pluralistic democratic culture, but I found the intellectual origins of that trajectory most intriguing. Cándida Smith begins with a detailed study of Monet and his critical appreciation. Monet is defended by Georges Clemenceau in 1928 as the archetypal modern artist for his disponibilité. This meant a disengagement from “immediate feelings,” a “refusal of theoretical speculation,” and specialization in a particular style. To Clemenceau—and Cándida Smith, it seems—these traits made Monet the “representative modern” and an exemplar of the reconciliation between “universal law and individuality” (pp. 18-22). Monet becomes the standard by which art and democracy might fuse. He represents the notion that the “average citizen” might focus on “his craft” through “incessant labor” and “serve the common good with his life” (p. 22-23). Monet’s art contributed to a national cultural life wherein all might participate.

     Delving into a philosophy behind Monet’s person and creations, Cándida Smith links him and Clemenceau to Hippolyte Taine’s 1864 lectures at the École des Beaux Arts, known together as the “Philosophy of Art.” Taine offered a view of “art as a distinct form of experimental knowledge.” Both the artist’s labor and his or her evocation of sensations and “identifying…sensational ranges” contributed to humanity's fund of knowledge (p. 16-18). Taine’s philosophy formed a wall of defense, intellectually at least, around visual media that would grow increasingly sensational to the popular mind through the twentieth century. Cándida Smith supplements Taine’s view with the psychology of William James. James forwarded that consciousness, or “knowing with,” girded a pluralistic view of truth friendly to subjectivity and perspective. Our consciousness of our own senses would help us to share our experiences in a collectively productive fashion (p. 4). Together these philosophies of knowing formed a basis for a pluralistic means of truth-telling that might underscore positive human differences as expressed in modern art. The potential convergences with twentieth-century notions of democratic diversity are plain.

     The problem of course was educating the public to view artists and their works as useful, solid expressions of knowledge. Monet had Clemenceau to explain and defend his work, both during and after Monet’s life. But twentieth-century California artists—like Rodia, DeFeo, Purifoy, Saar, ERRE, and Martínez—did not always have such capable explicators, either locally or nationally. Of course a few existed in California. In the 1950s and 1960s, during a popular period for DeFeo’s works, the critic (and artist) Fred Martin articulated the need for, and presence of, a regional element in art. He understood Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of a “habitus” in relation to an object’s structure and sensual experience (p. 7). Martin most certainly believed in Martin Heidegger’s notion of techne (i.e. “mode of knowing”) and the idea that “things” have presence and meaning independent of their maker’s purpose. Heidegger argued that these meanings also sometimes “insist upon a response.” In his critical writings, Martin applied these ideas to mid-century artists like DeFeo and Hedrick to enliven—to intellectualize—an appreciation for their art’s texture and process (p. 85-87, 108). Martin hoped to cultivate an audience “with sufficient sophistication to see the work before them” (p. 107). No small task, to be sure.

     Capable explicators of modern art existed in other contexts. Clement Greenberg performed an educative function on behalf of 1930s and 1940s modern artists on the East Coast. Dorothy Miller did likewise for the controversial, emergent “postmodern” participants in the “Sixteen Americans” exhibit of 1959. Noah Purifoy seems to have educated others about his own work—melding art and art critic during the sixties. Indeed, Purifoy’s work was accessible enough to become part of the healing process in Los Angeles in the wake of the Watts riots.

     But Purifoy’s contemporary African-American artists, whose more controversial works attracted the gaze of the public before the mid-1960s, suffered under that same gaze. This was due to either the lack of an interpreter, or the fact that the messages in their works were unwelcome. On the latter, assemblage artists like John Outterbridge and Saar made uncomfortable political statements with their “found object” constructions. Their art melded politics and perspective in a way that echoed Taine’s philosophy while remaining true to each artist’s larger (homogenized) racial background. This was not the case with other modern artists. In New York, for instance, artists their either transcended or left behind their upbringing, depending on your perspective. The didactic conveyance of messages, political or otherwise, was passé to them. But California was different. Cándida Smith summarized: “The depoliticization of art that occurred along with the vogue for abstraction and purification [in the 1960s on the East Coast] was never complete” in California (p. 153). Even so, it was their residual politicization that made the work of Purifoy’s African-American contemporaries accessible.

     One might be tempted to call the lack of appreciation for that California cohort of African-American artists a form of anti-intellectualism. That label, however, would depend on both the intent of the artist and the viewer-of-art, as well as how the term is defined. If the ignorance of the viewer was deliberate (i.e. the viewer made no attempt to understand the artist’s perspective before or after), then anti-intellectualism is an appropriate label. If not, then two factors complicate anti-intellectualism theses. First, California’s modern artists were relaying new “knowledge” through highly individualized perspectives. This constitutes an almost deliberate avoidance of accessibility. Second, per the examples above, the lack appreciation might derive from a direct realization by the viewer of an unsettling political statement. When, for instance, the 1950s art of Wallace Berman, Edward Kienholz, Walter Hopps, George Herms, and Robert Rauschenberg aroused popular and critical disgust, it was because people objected to the social, cultural, and political critiques embedded in their art (pp. 136-139). Yet—to extend this line of thought a bit—having the right of free expression does not automatically absolve the artist from popular (if sometimes conservative) notions of obscenity and concern for social stability. In other words, free expression is a necessary rather than sufficient condition for the creation of an intellectually sound public philosophy that supports a democratic culture.

    The anti-intellectualism issue arises not just in terms of art appreciation, but also in relation to the artists themselves. While most of the artists discussed in The Modern Moves West were self-evidently geniuses in terms of their material creations (to me, at least), Cándida Smith does hold forth the theme—presented via Clemenceau and Monet above, and continued in relation to Rodia and DeFeo—that the practical orientation of modern artists enabled their accessibility, as artists, in a democratic culture. Even if their art is difficult to interpret, the fact they create complex cultural artifacts, in spite of their un-theoretical and un-philosophical dispositions, also makes them sites of a fusion between art and democracy. While this is a somewhat risky extension, one might say that the anti-intellectualism of the artists becomes, in fact, a kind of virtue. If so, this fosters a feeling in the narrative that Cándida Smith’s retelling of their story is somewhat over-intellectualized. When only artists and critics like Noah Purifoy and Fred Martin really discuss the intellectual aspects of modern art, the framing of DeFeo’s and Rodia’s work in terms of Heidegger and Taine feels stretched. DeFeo, Rodia, and others did not operate under an “art as…experimental knowledge” paradigm. Does the book then make too much of their productions in terms of epistemology? Put another way, how do we make anti-intellectualism a virtue in terms of intellectual history?

     Apart from the perhaps unsolvable problems of audience interpretation and anti-intellectualism, the book raises another important issue in relation to building a modern democratic culture: balancing the past and present, or traditional virtues in art versus novelty. In discussing Sam Rodia’s genius at the end of the book, Cándida Smith presents the artist as “quintessential” and “exemplary” in that he “transcend[ed] the dual challenge of personal marginality and regional provinciality.” He did this by overcoming his lack of both material resources and training in the arts. Here is the passage that crystallize the issue: “Preexisting standards of excellence did not constrain him. …Rodia provided a model for cultural production no longer defined through a subordinate relationship to imaginary cultural capitals [in New York or Paris] whose distance always marked the inadequacy of one’s own immediate situation” (pp. 209-210). Putting this another way, how does novelty on the margins develop with existing power structures that define artistic excellence? Or how does a democratic culture balance respect for access alongside respect for past learning and accomplishment?  If access, novelty, and subjectivity are emphasized, is the humanistic tradition denigrated?  If teaching, learning, and knowledge of history are celebrated, is the creation of new knowledge through art stymied? Does the knowledge of historical excellence constrain and burden the imagination such that social progress through art is impeded?

     Cándida Smith offers no definitive answers to these questions. Indeed, there may be none. But this book does seem to point, in its sympathy for DeFeo, Purifoy, etc., toward edgy, novel, perspectival art as both a prime form for pushing social progress, and as truly representative of a democratic culture. Without explicitly saying it, it is in these artists, and their work, that Cándida Smith defines genius. But I would argue that building a democratic culture involves splitting the difference between the past and present. This at least allows for the young creator to not repeat the mistakes of the past—to be creative, but based on a sound foundation. Then again, if excellent modern art truly represents the subjective, and all humans are unique (a proposition one must take on faith), then all authentic art will never be merely repetitive. It will always convey some new perspective that may inspire a future cohort to look at the world differently. But here enters a second problem based, in a word, on optimism: namely, are not all new creations in art good in and of themselves, regardless of standards of quality? Bringing these speculations back to California, with the art of Purifoy, ERRE, and Martinez in mind, maybe it is the connection to politics and current events that keeps modern art grounded—anchored in something tangible. But that brings us back to the old democratic problem of representation: whose population’s message is being communicated in the art? And what is our collective standard for judging and preserving an artistic creation in a democratic culture?  Is that standard determined merely by the approval of the majority? Subjectivity leaves us chasing our tails in terms of standards and tradition.

     The weaknesses and lacunae of The Modern Moves West are mostly isolated. For instance, I was disappointed in Cándida Smith’s concession, or admission, that “however talented California writers, artists, and architects were in the first six decades of the twentieth century, none played a critical role in shaping either national or international conceptions of modern arts movements” (p. 38). While this might be technically true, in a public-awareness sense, they did play a role in shaping the nation’s collective expression of modernism. Indeed, if nothing else that role was “critical” because California’s artists worked against the central-place hegemony of modern art (i.e. New York’s defining role). California offered an organic alternative rather than a mere “derivative” (p. 39) expression of modern art—especially as shaped by the professionalism of the fine arts that occurred within its higher education institutions. But Cándida Smith’s concession undermines the importance of his text. There comes a point when caveats, for the historical profession or otherwise, sometimes push an author’s argument too far to the margins.

     I was mildly disappointed with the book’s discussion of education. In terms of higher education and the fine arts, The Modern Moves West presents something of a paradox. The assertion is made, in the context of Rodia and Monet, that the untrained art specialists whose productions achieve excellence—in spite of a lack of training or education—are paragons of modern art’s ability to foster a democratic culture. But when California universities are discussed in chapter three, particularly Berkeley, it appears that they—and not untrained individuals—actually foster the aggregate development of democracy through their growing fine arts departments. Indeed, DeFeo studied at Berkeley as a student and she ends up a tenure-track professor at Mills College in Oakland, California (p. 128-29). Training and education helped make her the artist she was. The reader is left wondering whether individuals or institutions foster democratic culture. A sensible answer might be in the middle. Cándida Smith goes some way in this direction by arguing that social conservatism “over the last third of the twentieth century” undermined “progressive reforms launched much earlier” (p. 72-73). But since an artist like DeFeo arose from the education establishment, it would seem that the promise of mid-century education initiatives, writ large in California, was indeed that they would foster a democratic culture. Even so, in the book the judgment of which route is best—individual or social (via education institutions)—is left unsaid. The book might have come down, with its informed history, forcefully on behalf of art education, as a social endeavor, being integral to the maintenance of a democracy. Perhaps Cándida Smith felt this was self evident?

     Speaking of larger institutions fostering art, as the book moved through the early Cold War years I also began to wonder how political entities and politics affected the modern art movement in California. Even though the National Endowment for the Arts was not created until 1965, the U.S. State Department supported arts exhibitions in the 1950s and before (i.e. under the cultural diplomacy rubric). Were any of the works of California’s artists sent overseas mid-century?  If not, why? A discussion of this—even if California artists were lacking—would go some way toward proving Cándida Smith’s periphery thesis. But perhaps California has already been discussed in work by, say, Gary O. Larson? Or maybe a discussion in Larson’s The Reluctant Patron reveals why California was excluded from early funding initiatives? [3]

     But these quibbles are philosophical, or merely additive, in a story that is much more than adequate. The Modern Moves West is an intelligent, thorough book as is. Cándida Smith opens up a complex discussion about the relationship between art’s prickly modern forms and democracy. If that discussion cannot be neatly closed, it is because thinking about art’s effects on the modern world is no less difficult than thinking through art, with its artists, to understand the complexity of the modern world. But this book is not an abstract intellectual history: the author tells a particular story about skilled, talented, and intriguing artists who localized a strain of modernity for Californians. The trials of Rodia, DeFeo, Purifoy, and the rest provide an thoughtful entry point for understanding the history of modern art in the United States generally.

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[1] Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest (New York: Norton, 1987).

[2] The rest of series is listed here.

[3] Gary O. Larson, The Reluctant Patron: The United States Government and Art, 1943-65 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvani Press, 1983).

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