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Oil on Braced Baltic Birch 23” x 40” x 2”
 
Satirist and cultural critic Tom Wolfe spent years traversing the museums and galleries that populate the New York art scene, describing them as “temples of Modernism.” Standing in front of thousands of Jackson Pollocks, de Koonings, Newmans, Rothkos, and Klines, he was promised a visual reward by the cultural elite. But it never came. He eventually realized it’s not “seeing is believing” but “believing is seeing,” since Modern Art had become completely literary, wherein paintings and other works exist only to illustrate the text.[1] 
 
In addition to rejecting representational art founded on philosophical realism, Modern artists spurned beauty. Willem de Kooning admitted, “Beauty becomes petulant to me. I like the grotesque. It’s more joyous.”[2] This is evidenced in his painting Woman I (pictured on far right). Throughout art history, the beautiful was often associated with feminine and natural forms, both of which are conspicuously absent from the canons of Modern Art history. The works of art in my painting Greening the White Cube are among the most famous of the 20th century—all completed by white men. According to designer Ingrid Fetell Lee, Modernism had a “near-allergic reaction to organic forms,” aspiring to a “rationalist mode of design free of sentimental flourishes.”[3] Female artists of that period like Hilma af Klint, Georgia O’Keeffe and Eva Zeisel are now being celebrated, and beauty is finally making a comeback.
 
Sophia peers into an abandoned art gallery, lamenting the masculine-industrial complex of Modern Art. Arguably, Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde shark entitled, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, and Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog should be categorized under Post-Modernism. Yet, the same Modernist anthropocentric tendency—to dominate and control nature—looms large. Their representations of animals serve merely as objects of fetishization, pandering to the prestige of trophy-hunting art collectors.
 
In the biblical book of Proverbs, Lady Wisdom is contrasted with Lady Folly. Contemporary artist Christopher Wool’s painting Untitled (Fool) poignantly illustrates how “the emperor has no clothes” as it sold at Christie’s in 2014 for $14 million! Lady Folly is alive and well in the art world. She may have been deconstructed and fragmented like Picasso’s prostitutes (Les Demoiselles d’Avignon), but the seductive allure of material wealth and status is all too present. Conversely, Lady Wisdom knows that “she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her; those who hold her fast will be blessed.”[4]
 
Greening the White Cube is my artistic manifesto. Lady Wisdom has been calling out in the public square of the white cube, but the art world has largely refused to heed her call.[5] Since her advice has been disregarded, chaos and disaster prevail. Sadly, much of Modern and Contemporary Art has alienated the general public from visual art, which has been replaced by more popular and democratically critiqued art forms like music, theatre, and film. Furthermore, scandals from tax-evading fraudulent galleries and an unregulated art market have not helped to improve public perception.
 
My painting envisions a future of natural reclamation—a time when the hallowed halls of the art elite will no longer reject beauty. Fortunately, this trend is already underway. As the anthropocentrism of Modernity passes into the bonfire of vanities, it makes way for a new wisdom-filled viriditas (greening) to take root.
 
[1] Wolfe, The Painted Word, 4-5.
[4] Willem de Kooning, quoted in Elderfield, de Kooning, a Retrospective, 277.
[5] Fetell Lee, Joyful, 291.
[6] Proverbs 3:14-18 NIV
[7] Proverbs 1:20-27