Hilton Kramer | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 25, 1928 |
| Died | March 27, 2012(2012-03-27) (aged 84) Harpswell, Maine, US |
| Education | Syracuse University (Bachelor's degree in English) Columbia University Harvard University Indiana University New School for Social Research |
| Occupation(s) | Art critic, essayist |
| Years active | 1950s–2006 |
| Spouse | Esta Kramer |
Hilton Kramer (March 25, 1928 – March 27, 2012) was an Americanart critic andessayist.
Kramer was born inGloucester, Massachusetts into a Jewish immigrant family,[1] and was educated atSyracuse University, receiving abachelor's degree in English;Columbia University; he studied literature and philosophy atHarvard University,Indiana University, and theNew School for Social Research.
Kramer worked as the editor ofArts Magazine,art critic forThe Nation, and from 1965 to 1982, as chief art critic forThe New York Times. He also published in theArt and Antiques Magazine andThe New York Observer. Kramer'sNew York Post column, initially called "Times Watch" - focused on his former employer, the New York Times - and later expanded to "Media Watch", was published weekly from 1993 to November 1997.
Kramer fought against what he considered to be leftist political bias in art criticism, and what he perceived as the aestheticnihilism characteristic of many 20th century working artists and art critics. The frustration withThe New York Times's policies led to his resignation from the newspaper in 1982. He co-founded (withSamuel Lipman) the conservative magazineThe New Criterion, for which Kramer was also co-editor and publisher. He took a stronglyanti-Communist stance in his 2003 review of Anne Applebaum'sGulag: A History. InThe Twilight of the Intellectuals (1999), he defended the anti-Communist views of art criticClement Greenberg.
In 1952, Kramer took issue with the prevailing understanding ofaction painting as a "psychological event." He argued that such an understanding "denied the aesthetic efficacy of painting itself and attempted to remove art from the only sphere in which it can be truly experienced, which is the aesthetic sphere."[2] He took issue withpop art,conceptual art, andpostmodern art. Kramer characterized postmodernism in the visual arts as "modernism with a sneer, a giggle, modernism without any animating faith in the nobility and pertinence of its cultural mandate." He was incisive in his distinction between modernism and postmodernism, referring to the age of postmodernism as "this age of irony and institutionalized subversion." He has contrasted this with ideals he found in modernism: "the discipline of truthfulness, the rigor of honesty."[3]
Kramer contended that federal funding of the arts favored political correctness over artistic merit.[2][3] He wrote in 1993:
Kramer faulted theWhitney Biennial for what he saw as a preoccupation with gender and ethnic identity. He wrote that the biennials "seem to be governed by a positive hostility toward — a really visceral distaste for — anything that might conceivably engage the eye in a significant or pleasurable visual experience."[2][3]
Hilton Kramer died of heart failure on March 27, 2012, inHarpswell, Maine, two days after his 84th birthday. His only immediate survivor was his wife, Esta Kramer (1929–2020).[5][3]
Hilton Kramer's clear, incisive style and combative temperament made him one of the most influential critics of his era, writing for two decades at The New York Times and as a chief art critic at The New Criterion for almost 10 years.[6][7] He was known for his devastating, blunt, and quotable reviews about artists, institutions and work he found lacking.[8]
"the more Minimal the art, the more maximum the explanation."[9]
"Every day grows more amnesiac about its recent past."[10]
Kramer dismissedWhitney Biennial exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. A 1977New York Times review was titled "This Whitney Biennial Is As Boring As Ever." The critic sarcastically described an artwork in the show, "It is said to be a great hit with the schoolchildren who are marched through the Whitney for the purposes of cultural enlightenment."[11]
In a 1979New York Times exhibition review of a Great Depression Era artist collective Kramer stated "The truth is, a group like theAmerican Abstract Artists no longer has any serious function to perform, and its continued existence is little more than an act of nostalgia... Surely it is time to disband."[12]
Kramer regardedHarold Rosenberg’s essay onaction painting, published inARTnews in December 1952, as “intellectually fraudulent.”[6]
WhenPhilip Guston's 1970 Marlborough Gallery exhibit in New York City signified a change from his lyrical abstraction to a rambunctious personal late style, Kramer disapproved calling Guston a "stumblebum."[7]
