Editorials / My Kind of Bomb / My Kind of Art
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIAL MY KIND OF BOMB by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Last month, in the afterglow of the Reagan administration's admission that, yes, it had decided to assemble the neutron bomb, I plugged my ears...
...You will recall that the Pericles of Plains, Georgia, had decided to leave the neutron bomb in pieces so as not to arouse the successors of Bertrand Russell and Nikita Khrushchev...
...Marx and to give Soviet commanders a sense of achievement...
...Braque took an even larger step...
...specific target is impossible...
...In fact, he holds it up to derision...
...So much for Europe...
...Despite the fact that generous connoisseurs were willing to pay $300,000 for it, Will thought it was very funny...
...We must be most concerned about the huge SS-20 missiles that the Soviets have tar geted on Western Europe, and the Pershing and cruise missiles with which we plan to counter them...
...In their wake would be destruction, death, and the KGB...
...The prospect of using them in Europe has caused anxiety within the NATO alliance for years, much to the joy of Soviet strategists whose growing armor increases that anxiety still more...
...Yet, Ron apparently remains in favor with the gods...
...Were war to ignite between the Soviets and the West, those tanks would blitzkrieg across the European plain with devastating force...
...The neutron bomb does not merely threaten the mammoth Soviet tank force, it also takes the fun out of the Soviet style of battle...
...Some are still ignored...
...Last month, however, there sounded in his commentary a very ugly note, which, I suppose, we progressives should have anticipated...
...And now he is paying dearly for his Philistine outbursts...
...Poor Ron had really stepped into it this time, and so I awaited a painful brouhaha...
...It puts up a fence against potential invaders, while adding very little to the West's offensive capability...
...Now along come those inventive Yanks with a tactical nuclear weapon that can be hurled at oncoming tanks, killing only their crews and infantry support, and leaving nearby civilian populations and buildings intact...
...Will finds works like "Verticle Kilometer" and "Room Temperature" incomprehensible, and so he grows sniffy...
...A war that only kills soldiers...
...Contrary to the neutron bomb's critics who insist that the bomb will dangerously disturb the balance of forces in Europe, the bomb will help to re-establish that balance and in a very benign way...
...Will, naturally, objects...
...Well, according to Washington's cognoscenti, now even our NATO allies favor deterrent weapons that are unusable...
...Not only are villages laid waste, but whole cities and countries, too, the better to raise up a new order in the image and likeness of Dr...
...Let us seriously negotiate the removal of these monsters...
...Some years ago, while visiting the Musee nationale d'art moderne, I came across a room dominated by a freestanding canvas on which there appeared bland portrayals of life-sized people in line at a bus stop...
...And whether they answer yes or no, ask them why...
...Do you doubt that such a masterpiece is on display in New York...
...Its duty is to shout at us, spit on our children, unbuckle our belts while we are not looking...
...Jolted by an artistic flush, I rushed to the edge of the canvas and took my place behind the last figure in line, a rather well-proportioned lady, probably French...
...Cezanne, of course, took the step...
...They have spent a lot of very dear rubles on that tank force of theirs, but what good will it be if its crews are certain to be turned into terminal cases as soon as they cross into Western Europe...
...Last month at New York's Museum of Modern Art, I experienced just this when I viewed a huge transparent toothpaste tube filled with real animal organs...
...Moreover, I have been an active participant...
...It is all very good news for those who want to see Europeans freed from the disabling fear of an imminent Soviet invasion and from the enervating pessimism that has so recently haunted their foreign policies...
...Possibly I would have been given a satisfying lump of swag from the National Endowment for the Arts...
...Finally, my leg muscles began cramping...
...Let us try to look at the neutron bomb from the Soviet Union's point of view...
...It is also good news for those who admire European architecture and for those who deal in the used tank market...
...As for the neutron bomb, remember the poesy of Robert Frost: Good fences make good neigh bors...
...All across the Republic newspaper correspondence columns are filling with reproachful letters from assistant professors of art...
...Do you think I would make it up...
...Sometimes they come from associate professors and even full (continued on page 41) EDITORIAL (continued from page 5) professors...
...The Politburo's favorite human beings are soldiers...
...Offensive war is what the friends of peace should oppose most staunchly...
...Contemporary art, if it is truly aglow with Minerva's light, is supposed to make us feel like morons...
...When the Red Army goes into battle it relishes the destruction of villages...
...A war that does-not destroy nearby villages...
...Of the aforementioned squawkers I believe our Soviet friends have the most to squawk about...
...Yes, the Soviets are irate, and they have every reason to be...
...If they were not, he would sell them for a little less...
...William Carlos Williams tells us that in the time of Cezanne a "transition took place . . .from the appreciation of a work of art as a copying of nature to the thought of it as the imitation of nature...
...Ask the profs now hectoring George Will if such an exhibit is possible...
...Of course, on matters of contemporary aesthetics there is always room for informed give and take, but what is so funny about modern masterworks such as ''Vertical Kilometer," a kilometer-long brass rod, buried in a kilometer-long hole...
...Europe took the decision calmly, and once again the cognoscenti are wearing the dunce's cap...
...For that matter, when the Red Army mixes it up, the primary objective seems to be not victory but the utmost slaughter and destruction...
...The only noticeable squawks came from the same old hen houses: those situated in Scandinavia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and various left-wing haunts here and abroad...
...Any Afghan peasant can tell you that...
...It is ineffable...
...Columnist George F. Will has seen enemy action on many fronts, often acquitting himself quite well...
...Essentially, Will's critics agree that, when it comes to art, this columnist is a pantywaist...
...Nothing happened...
...Will has taken his conservatism too far this time...
...Had I stood there much longer I might have been offered a position on the art faculty of a great university...
...But tactical nuclear weapons are ferociously destructive, and concentrating their destructive force on a Adapted from RET's weekly column syndicated by King Features...
...I gave up the canvas...
...They now have more than 40,000 tanks ready to bring proletarian revolution to Western Europe...
...Contemporary art is supposed to scrape the bones, crack the skull, gouge eyes, and tear off an ear...
...A , few years ago, the gifted Carl Andre arranged apolaustically 36 boulders on open land in Hartford, Connecticut...
...Unless NATO resorted to tactical nuclear weapons, many ana-lystsfear that these tanks would roll up to the English Channel in a matter of days...
...The French applauded...
...Will disapproves of contemporary art...
...I stood there motionless in an old trench coat, expecting disgruntled art fans to call in the gendarmes any minute...
...Neutron warfare is sissy warfare...
...Once set off, these weapons indiscriminately destroy lives, both civilian and military...
...Will derided these works along with others in his syndicated column...
...I have also read some from art lovers, though these letters are considerably shorter than those of the profs, and less violent...
...I myself have been an avid champion of contemporary art...
...What kind of war is that...
...It is one of the achievements of our day that great contemporary artists can be misunderstood and still walk off with $300,000, often snatched from Uncle Sam himself...
...He seems to have forgotten that all great artists were ignored in their time...
...For those of us who appreciate contemporary art, there is always an exalted moment or two in the museum when the message of the weird enters us, giving us fresh insights into all those George Wills frowning around us...
...It is still the failure to take this step that blocks us in seeking to gain a full conception of the modern in art...
...MY KIND OF ART by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...The flies, after all, had expired...
...Last month, in the afterglow of the Reagan administration's admission that, yes, it had decided to assemble the neutron bomb, I plugged my ears and prepared for the worst...
...Braque is said to have taken his pictures outdoors, just to see how his creations ranked against those of nature...
...Their explanations will tell you much about art in our time...
...And what is so humorous about "Room Temperature," featuring a water bucket, four apples, six balloons (uninflated), and two flies...
...It is the mission of contemporary art to jar us...
...For 20 minutes a score of connoisseurs passed by very pleased...
...If they were up to snuff, he would sell them for a lot of money...
...Very imaginatively, he called it "Stone Field Sculpture" and was paid $87,000, much of it by the National Endowment for the Arts...
...True, he is somewhat too prone to controversy for my tastes, but he is generally intelligent and humane...
...Others winked and passed on...
Vol. 14 • October 1981 • No. 10
