Philip Guston

In 1878, Henry James reported in these pages the outcome of Whistler v. Ruskin, the buzz of the London art scene that year. Whistler, Ruskin had written, was "a coxcomb," demanding "200 guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." The painter sued for libel, and was awarded nominal damages consisting of one farthing. The trial was a Gilbert & Sullivan farce brought to life, since the language of litigation in its nature is comically unsuited to aesthetic determination. Ruskin's critical and Whistler's artistic reputation were left largely unaltered by the verdict, but there is little question that it was an immense personal defeat for Ruskin. The vehemence of his critical prose registered the urgency he attributed to aesthetic matters--so to call his language into question was to call into question his vision of the world. Whistler probably was a coxcomb, whatever that Edwardian epithet means. But Ruskin was a figure of tragic stature, and the episode helped precipitate his final emotional breakdown.

The unhappy confrontation between Whistler and Ruskin is the subject of a brooding introspective aria in the second act of Modern Painters, the 1995 opera by David Lang and Manuela Hoelterhoff, based on Ruskin's life. It was an inspiration to see in Ruskin a subject suitable for operatic representation, and it recently occurred to me of how few art critics this might be true. Ruskin's tragedy was internally connected with his stature as a prophet of aesthetic redemption. If good art is as integral as he believed to a good society, art criticism is an instrument of social change. Ruskin could hardly have agreed with James that it was at most an agreeable luxury--like printed talk. And Ruskin's assessment of it has continued to inflect the art criticism of writers who might not fully subscribe to his particular social vision. How are we to explain the often punitive edge of critical invective if critics supposed themselves engaged in mere agreeable discourse--like reviewing restaurants, say, or fashion shows? The lives of art critics may not be the stuff of grand opera--but face-offs between critics and artists have at times risen to operatic heights because the art under contest was viewed by both as possessed of the greatest moral weight.

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