Right or wrong, Hilton Kramer was usually sure. I applaud that in an arts critic. He was also enlightening — we learned from him, even when we disagreed. The visual art world, I believe and have written, needs better criticism — Kramer showed a way.
In his New York Times obit, now on the website, William Grimes quotes Roger Kimball, managing editor of the New Criterion, which Kramer served as founding editor, saying “He called it as he saw it — an increasingly rare virtue in today’s culture.” I agree. Or, criticism simply asserts, without reasoning, without arguing. Not Kramer; he argued.
Later, Kimball added, ““He was a high modernist, but he embraced a rather diverse lot that ran the gamut from Richard Pousette-Dart to Pollock to Matisse to the Russian constructivists.”
I suspect that we could all learn something from Kramer’s art essays, which have been republished, Grimes notes, in four collections: “The Age of the Avant-Garde: An Art Chronicle of 1956-1972†(1973); “The Revenge of the Philistines: Art and Culture, 1972-1984†(1985), “The Twilight of the Intellectuals: Culture and Politics in the Era of the Cold War†(1999); and “The Triumph of Modernism: The Art World, 1985-2005†(2006).
The New Criterion says it will devote its May issue to Kramer, and in the meantime here is Kimball’s announcement of Kramer’s death.
I didn’t know Kramer, but I read him, especially in his prime. The sad part about his career is that he became too predictable in his later years.
UPDATE: The New Criterion has compiled a list of some of his articles, with links to them, here.