existence in movement after movement.nTake something like Minimalismnwhich, in one gallery exhibition,noffered no more on the walls but briefninstructions on what might be there. InnMinimalism no skills are needed.nSo what are the values of that verynsmall group of pundits who confernstatus on empty exhibitions, puff upnprices of painters in their own collections,nand send them overseas to representnAmerican art? For when there isnvirtually nothing in a painting (as in AdnReinhardt’s black canvases, which havento be trickily lit when photographed tonassure that nothing shows), then criteriancollapse and the museum curatorncan merely prophecy, assuring us fromnhis eminence that the work is avantgardenand original. He occupies thenthrone.nThe entire gnosis of rnodern art innthis country reposes on originality.nProfessor Lester Longman calls it “thenparamount value” today. T.E. Hulmentold us that works of art aren’t eggs; hencould have made his point morentrenichantly by substituting automobilesnfor eggs. The whole structure ofnour economy, as of our necessary militarynsecurity, rests on the new. Itsninfection in the sphere of art can benseen in The New York Times’ review ofnthe biennial, where the critic chops upnart developments into decades, assumingnthere is a new art available to then80’s that was not present in the 70’s.nBut art is not technology, and artnmodes that have unseated their antecedentsncome in turn to seem trite,ncommonplace (cubism, futurism,ndada). When I first came to New York,nthe Guggenheim Museum was fillednwith the hard-edged abstractions ofnHilla Rebay and her followers andnfriends; with the advent of the abstractnexpressionists (and James JohnsonnSweeney to the curatorship) theSe werenbanished to the basement where, so farnas I know, they still remain, thoughnsimilar paintings have erupted and thenranks of their successors, despite astronomicalnprices paid for publicized figures,nhave been thinned drastically andnmay well end up in those self-samencellars.nBut no museum director is going tonchart a decline in this year’s model ofncontemporary art. To be extreme todaynis to be original. To be extravagantlynextreme is to be more so. No museumn54/CHRONICLESndirector today adds much representationalnart to his contemporary collectionn(unless it is accredited asninvestment-worthy); that model hasnbeen seen before. “Imitation shouldnnot be permitted to have even thenslightest part in the creative process,”nwrote the influential Hans Hoffman innthe catalog of the 1959 University ofnIllinois Annual. Yet originality in itselfnwas far from a preeminent canon innthe past (El Greco and Turner onlynbeing valued for originality years afterntheir deaths). And what about all thosenMadonnas? As Longman suggests, wenhave turned originality in art into innovation,nthe new. Signature art (a readilynrecognizable style to identify thenpainter) is paramount, yet carries itsndangers for the practitioner. After all,nwhen you have established your trademark,nbe you Pollock, Mondrian, ornKline, you would be ill advised to alternit in the marketplace; at a recentnChristie’s auction black-and-whitenKlines (his true signature) went fornhigher prices than Klines with, color.nBut after the trademark, what? Whynpersist in a style that has been, pace thenpundits, superceded? Why not take artnto the logical vacuum it now inhabitsnand discover “that remorseless consolation—nin the end is the beginning,”nas a MOMA catalog described anPollock?nThe critics have succeeded in makingnrepresentation look like politicalnreaction, thereby licensing a new ordernthat emancipates the artist from anyntraditional accomplishments of hisnmystery, subserving the same to money.nThere seems every evidence wenshall continue to see the end of artnserved up in our museums as kitschn(witness the tragedy of England’s Victorianand Albert) and funded by taxlevyingngrants — take the arid boxes ofnDonald Judd, the Tilted Arc placed innManhattan Plaza by Richard Serran(removed at public request), then”earthworks” of an artist who collectedndreck from beside the New Jerseynturnpike (and has now returned it), thenshabby sacks dropped in the Caribbeannby another, the encasing of largenstretches of the landscape in plastic bynChristo (inducted into the NationalnInstitute of Arts and Letters in 1989).nPerhaps the final insult has been tonauthenticate this misdirection of art bynciting someone like Baudelaire as itsnnnsponsor. Baudelaire left us a body of artncriticism in the form of descriptivenreviews of Parisian “salons,” not entirelyndissimilar from Whitney biennials.nDelacroix allowed Baudelaire to benaround. The poet knew Manet andnstayed with Courbet, in whose vastnrAtelier, rejected by the 1855 Salon,nBaudelaire may be seen (just).nYet none of these artists abandonednthe humanistic. It is simply difficult tonsee today as Baudelaire saw. It is hardnto see an eariy Constable as revolutionaryn(“Take away that riasty greennthing,” they told him at the RoyalnAcademy) any more than it is thatnfamous bridge at Aries. Baudelaire’snfather was a close friend of JeannNaigeon, a pupil of David and curatornof the Luxembourg from 1802 ton1830. Baudelaire saw his,first;,Delacroixn(the Bataille d^;^Tailleb.o}irg)f:mnthe 1837 Salon, thus beginnirig a lifelongninfatuation with that ultraromanticnartist. He attended Delacroix’snfuneral with Manet.nIt is true he championed originality,nbut he would have been the last to say,nwith Herbert Read in Icon and Idea,nthat “Feeling and thinking are one.”nBaudelaire’s goddess of beauty was anstern figure, his sonnet to her includingnthe line “Je hais le mouvement quindeplace les lignes.” He invariably demandedndiscipline in his own poetrynand in fact admired much painting thatntoday looks to us like the acme ofnvulgarity — Lassales-Bordes’ dyingnCleopatra, Baudry’s Vestal, Prud’hon’snVenus et Adonis, and Haussoullier’snFontaine de jouvence, a pastiche evennin its tide. As Baudelaire put it, “Looknat what it is to live,,in.,^a^ time..whennpeople think inspiration-‘”suffices~”foii:,nand replaces everything . . . there liesnthe abyss into which plunges the chaot-..nic course of Mazeppa.” Our standardsnin art, as exemplified in museum shownafter show, are those of hype, and hypenis kitsch. Consider Cordon Washburn,nprefacing a Carnegie International atnPittsburgh: “To be out of step withnyour contemporaries is to be camouflaged.nAlthough clearly visible, no onenmay chance to ‘see’ you.” Or, as OscarnWilde again put it, to be intelligiblenthese days is to be found out.nGeoffrey Wagner’s new book is anbiography of Baudelaire entitled ThenWings of Madness.n