From The Wide-Wide Art World Of Arthur Carney-When The Professional Art Critics Got Egg On Their Faces

From The Wide-Wide Art World Of Arthur Carney-When The Professional Art Critics Got Egg On Their Faces

By Laura Perkins

I am feeling good today. For the first time since I have been giving my admittedly and proudly stated amateur art critic opinions I can go on the offensive. The recent sale of an Art Carney in New York for almost two million dollars has put some egg on the faces of those so-called professional art critics who previously sneered at me. I had been on the defensive, not for anything I did or expected to do, but because one Clarence Dewar, professional art critic for Art Today out of nowhere decided that as an amateur I was “soft” target for his venom. The flare-up started when I misidentified, a easy thing to do if you look at his work, Franz Golder as being not a modern artist but from one of the Flemish-Dutch 16^th century schools. Apparently adding insult to injury for the thin-skinned Dewar I also noted that one of the artists he was championing Freida Kane was boring and repetitive whatever virtues her “discover” might have for expanding our knowledge of almost forgotten women artists of the late 19^th century. The cardinal sin though was to comment that iconic Edward Hopper (he most famously and widely known for Nighthawks at the Diner) could not draw faces. I thought the world would explode with his long essay against my heresy on that one.          

But that was then. Today I am in fighting trim over the Carney purchase (by a major museum by the way and not something bought by a hedge fund billionaire on the advice of his art gallery advisor). About ten years ago one Clarence Dewar on his own hook meaning that he was not under the thumb of his mentor Clement Greenberg spent about five thousand words giving ten thousand reasons why Art Carney’s work would never sell and was passé. He noted along the way that Carney’s work seemed cartoonish, his drawings lacking precision, his characters seemed too outlandish and his sizings were wrong among other things.

At that time I sent an e-mail, a letter really to Art Today basically calling Dewar a holy goof for not recognizing that in the post-modern era, meaning in the era where his boss’ championship of abstract art had faded that a return to some form of representation art was in the cards. Not the old-timey stuff that the camera and now digital camera and processes has made obsolete but a fresh look at the world through outlandish figures and hand me done drawing. That sale put Art Carney on the map although I should note that the Harlowe Galleries in San Francisco had been promoting and selling its native son’s work for the past couple of years. Touché Clarence