The Painted Word

The Painted Word is Tom Wolfe’s caustic attack on the world of modern art – the artists, the patrons, and especially the critics, who are portrayed as vapid, self-absorbed and self-serving. He of course has a point – critics (of any medium) are often status-conscious and susceptible to group-think, and they sometimes have an undeserved power to determine what the broader public considers good art. But he takes his argument too far, and he does it in a lazy way without judiciously separating out the good critics or artists from the bad ones. He merely criticizes, and fails to appreciate or elevate. The result is similar to the person who stares at a work of modern art and believes he is making a deep point when he says, “I could have painted that.” Tom Wolfe should be better than that person.