Paranoid Modernism

Colleagues in paranoia, pen and wash, January 2010


I have just finished reading Paranoid Modernism by David Trotter (Oxford University Press, 2001), something I have intended to do since it was first published. I highly recommend the book, it sheds light on so many issues, including how charisma came to be so much more significant than expertise in the battle for cultural capital.

Ambitious art critics are as desperate as artists in the hunt for renown, so there is plenty of scope for paranoid collusion between the critical establishment and those engaged in "new" production, whereby the righteous claims of both to superiority is only strengthened by a presumption of hostility.

Given that a claim to avant-garde status is innately exclusive, it has always puzzled me how the establishment of the 'cult of the new' stresses the virtue of its democratic approach. In reality, disdain of the viewer's inferior sensibilities, intellect, attitudes or expectations, which must be endlessly challenged, is the main if not only signifier as to what belongs within its realm and what does not. Anything that does not is dismissed with haughty contempt as either reactionary or amateur - or populist, indeed! Luckily for the status quo of this official avant-garde, a lot of people do actually seem to love being challenged in this way, even if it is the same old challenge yet again, perhaps in a different guise. Or perhaps it is because the challenges being offered don't really challenge enough, so they are safe little encounters in a world that more generally doesn't feel so safe anymore.

To get back to the paranoid modernist - a sad aspect, from what I have understood, is the initial self doubt about being a "man of qualities" capable of accumulating cultural capital. I imagine somebody with the ambition to be a "somebody", to stand out from the mass, monolithically erect (even if female!), but brooding under a great fear of inadequacy. The paranoid structure is to turn this insecurity outwards by means of perceived persecution, believing that persecution signifies the specialness of its victim. It is a symmetrical and stable structure which enables the professional, with whom paranoia is especially associated, to flourish in the belief that he/she has a uniqueness more valuable to society than that conveyed by any "common" professional standards (including, for example, possession of skill at one extreme and possibly even the law at the other). I hope I have explained it well enough - obviously the book has to be read to appreciate the proposition David Trotter makes and to digest its full texture and scope.

I suspect the seeds for paranoia within the practice of the visual arts (Trotter refers mostly to literature) were sown in the studios of Paris in the 19th Century, with the collapse of the Academy's heirarchy. For, surely, in spite of all modernism's claims to be anti-authority, it is that very cultural capital (reputation, respect, good income, influence) once assured by the Academy heirarchy which remains the primary goal of ambition. Outside the Academy, artists were, after all, only skilled tradesmen. To earn a reputation and a living that matched the rejected but desired status of academicians meant engaging with enterprise far beyond the development of one's expertise as an artist. It meant building a new heirarchy, fought over between colleagues, for which the qualification to succeed depended on invention, on self-belief (or the will to denounce others) and on the ability to generate authority through propaganda - a good breeding ground for paranoids.

In fact it is hard to imagine how, nowadays, any professionally trained artist finds the strength to persist without a touch of paranoia, myself included: though I can think of some, like the great Eric Peskett, for example, who continued in homage to life and to art itself, as it were, in pursuit of knowledge and revelation for its own sake, and indifferent to lack of recognition.

I am wondering wether the main thrust of modernism emigrated from Paris, along with Duchamp, because the French finally appreciated the visual arts enough to resist the dominance of paranoid modernism and the subsequent eclipse of aesthetic quality as signifier of creative value: perhaps they loved life too much to act as host to modernism's inherent hostilities: or perhaps, as the cultural elite of the avant-garde might say, they were just not "democratic" enough in their outlook. That would be an interesting article to read - somebody who could deconstruct references to 'democracy' in Fine Art. After all, the term seems to be used by some these days as just another word for capitalism, the freedom of the market, the freedoms of consumerism. I think democracy was meant to mean more than that and I would love to read some thoughts about this by a good writer.