I have been studying Kitaj's manifestos since our country's so-called racial reckoning of recent years, which was so obviously the American manifestation of Blut und Boden that the recent explosion of Jew-hatred in the West is of little surprise. We moved to the country last year to avoid the inevitable.
Kitaj was handily better-read than his critics but my sense is that his understanding of the literary and philosophical modernists was idiosyncratic in the extreme. He was a picture-maker in constant need of a subject, and read accordingly. The critics may not have been entirely wrong in suspecting a pretense, but for Kitaj's purposes it would have been fine to scavenge the philosophers rather than analyze them. The manifestos are aphoristic and declamatory. I think the question of his dubious intellectual ambitions can be safely laid aside in favor of his obvious pictorial ambitions, at which he succeeded more often than not.
As a Jew trying to orient himself with respect to the Western canon, he left behind a record that's eminently worth revisiting in the current political climate.
Really interesting article, thank you. I know a little about Kitaj. I became interested in his work after the much-lamented Late Show on BBC2, discussed the vitriolic reaction to his 1994 retrospective at the Tate. Kitaj’s wife had died shortly after the exhibition, and he directly blamed the British art critics for her death. The notion that ‘the art should speak for itself’ was pre-eminent back in the 90’s, with the success of the YBA’s. It’s hard to imagine Tracey Emin writing a ‘manifesto’ on her work. She has, however, written a memoir, ‘Strangeland’ which, given the highly personal nature of her art, is probably the same thing....
Interesting article. I myself didn't know about Kitaj's writings or history. It reminds me of something Ad Reinhardt, I think, said: the artist shouldn't burden art with his life. Sounds like Reinhardt and Kitaj wouldn't get along.
I have been studying Kitaj's manifestos since our country's so-called racial reckoning of recent years, which was so obviously the American manifestation of Blut und Boden that the recent explosion of Jew-hatred in the West is of little surprise. We moved to the country last year to avoid the inevitable.
Kitaj was handily better-read than his critics but my sense is that his understanding of the literary and philosophical modernists was idiosyncratic in the extreme. He was a picture-maker in constant need of a subject, and read accordingly. The critics may not have been entirely wrong in suspecting a pretense, but for Kitaj's purposes it would have been fine to scavenge the philosophers rather than analyze them. The manifestos are aphoristic and declamatory. I think the question of his dubious intellectual ambitions can be safely laid aside in favor of his obvious pictorial ambitions, at which he succeeded more often than not.
As a Jew trying to orient himself with respect to the Western canon, he left behind a record that's eminently worth revisiting in the current political climate.
Really interesting article, thank you. I know a little about Kitaj. I became interested in his work after the much-lamented Late Show on BBC2, discussed the vitriolic reaction to his 1994 retrospective at the Tate. Kitaj’s wife had died shortly after the exhibition, and he directly blamed the British art critics for her death. The notion that ‘the art should speak for itself’ was pre-eminent back in the 90’s, with the success of the YBA’s. It’s hard to imagine Tracey Emin writing a ‘manifesto’ on her work. She has, however, written a memoir, ‘Strangeland’ which, given the highly personal nature of her art, is probably the same thing....
Interesting article. I myself didn't know about Kitaj's writings or history. It reminds me of something Ad Reinhardt, I think, said: the artist shouldn't burden art with his life. Sounds like Reinhardt and Kitaj wouldn't get along.