Avant-Garde Without All the Flash

THERE WAS A time, not long ago, when nobody wanted to talk about the obscurity of the avant-garde. The astonishing popularity of modern art, with record crowds in the museums and ever-increasing prices in the auction houses, made any mention of the ivory tower or the artist’s garret sound like outdated romantic hooey. That was how things stood until the last year or two, when the packaging and branding of so-called cutting-edge art has become so pervasive that hardly anybody can bear the hype. A reaction has set in. Of course there have always been stalwart believers in modern art’s intimate, quietistic, enigmatic, and even obscurantist side. But I think we are seeing a significant uptick of interest in those aspects of the modernist imagination.