They're Not Growing 'Em Like This Anymore

Hilton Kramer, editor and publisher of The New Criterion, former chief art critic for The New York Times, and now art critic for The New York Observer, gives that egregious, and egregiously mindless, exercise in multi-million-dollar, self-indulgent postmodern conceit known as The Gates a well-deserved savaging, unflinchingly complete with appropriate, tell-it-like-it-is outrage.

Nothing even remotely similar to [the] culture-changing reversal [of Abstract Expressionism] is to be expected from an event as shallow and transitory as the erection of these gates in Central Park. Indeed, to the extent that they have any impact on international opinion, the result is likely to be negative. For what they signify is New York’s surrender to a kind of tourist trade devoid of artistic consequence. Except as some sort of ultimate parody of Minimalist art, all those orange curtains fluttering on their orange steel frames contribute exactly nothing to the realm of artistic achievement. On the contrary, they make our city look more and more like a pushover for provincial charlatans....

Oh!, for a return to the mainstream media of such deeply knowledgeable, outspoken critics in the domain of classical music!

What's that? Did I "experience" The Gates at first-hand?

Don't be absurd.