Chuck Close and Categorical thought

On Categorical thought

Chuck Close in the video above states that there are “NO undiscovered geniuses.” He goes on to say that there may be many “competent unknown artists” but that all geniuses have been and will be discovered by the Art Market (the topic of the debate).

I will not go into the inconsistencies of his logic nor the utter lack of coherence of those on his side of the debate.  Suffice it to say that that he splices together a number of disparate facts to come up with what turns out to be his conclusion: many artists do not make art for money, many artists are mediocre, thus a lot of “art” is mediocre, there are no undiscovered geniuses, the “marriage” between artists and their art dealer is a love story, artists, geniuses or otherwise, do not make art for money, so the art market is ethical. He may speak from his heart with sentiment, at least apparently so, but the logic behind his words is at best inconsistent. 

Concentrating on the most topsy-turvy of his statements, the declaration that all geniuses are discovered by the art market rings hollow.  Close cites as an example, in his arguments, as a point of illustration no doubt, the ignorance of the art establishment of the 19^th century, when pompier artists like Bouguereau were celebrated highly and mightily over completely undiscovered and unknowns, geniuses with the names of Cézanne, Van Gogh, Seurat . . .  The only logical conclusion from this example would be to say that in light of the 19^th century French Salon’s refusal to acknowledge great art (Gérôme, a fine pompier genius if ever there was one, accompanied the then president of France's Third Republic to the 1900 World's Fair in Paris and stopped him from entering the rooms showing the work of the Impressionists on saying, "Stop, Mr. President, here is the dishonor of France").  The art gallery system of our era, with all its emphasis on the next new thing, on what is saleable, not to speak of the even more problematic side called speculation and opaque art auction practices, would be even more rife a system to completely ignore “genius.” 

Of course, what constitutes "genius" is not divulged.  Close does not discuss what “genius” means to him nor what a gallery would consider to be the work of "genius".  Given that he cites the gallery system as an extremely efficacious way of discovering "genius," one wonders how this enterprise functions.  I presume it is the usual "I know it when I see it" type of response.

I venture another argument--categorical statements as such are based on a sense of ownership of truth, one in which this oracular vision of the world is defined by the few chosen. These declared truths, or at least highly mutated mystical thought, clear the slate of all contradictions and simple irrational quirks that make existence so messy and irregular.  The subtext, obviously, is that he himself, having had decades of success, is a genius, and that all those who have failed to have that success, well, they are mediocre.  The typical paradigm of “cream floating to the top,” as if that is a given unalterable truth.  Who is naive here?

Borges wrote a succinct line in his piece on The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim (Ficciones):

"We see from there that Mir Bahadur Ali was unable to free himself from the crudest of all temptations in art, that of playing the genius."