Letter From the Editor 020107
In hindsight, the election of 2004 was hardly about red state or blue state. It wasn’t about being tough on national security, or faulty exit polling. It was about speaking plainly; it was about arguing reductively. John Kerry’s sailboat-ready haircut was rejected for a stale crow’s nest. Then this week’s top personality was Judith Regan, the infamous O.J. Simpson publisher, who on top of everything was accused of replacing mezuzahs with dollar bills. Vulgarity is afoot.
As for the midterm elections, forget the repudiation of violence, the end of corporate scandal, or the hypocritical sexual discrimination: Nancy Pelosi—now that’s a woman who knows how to wear a skirt suit. The new Speaker represents a reaction against indelicacy, a resurgency of the orderly and the organized.
Lest one think me misogynistic or supercilious, allow me to clarify. A repudiation of vulgarity: did I not only two weeks ago pledge to eschew politesse? Besides, it’s not the suit that makes the Speaker.
The English word vulgarity dates from 1579, meaning “the common people,” and deriving from the Latin vulgus for “the multitude.” It reportedly picked up the connotation of “coarseness, crudeness” in 1774. There seems to be little question as to how specifically American the phenomenon is.
But vulgarity obviously has little to do with the inherent baseness of democracy, and seems destined to be restricted to snootier circles. The more visible offender is the vulgarian, who in spite of good economic fortune is unwilling to elevate himself. I’m looking at you, brown-bagging LIRR passenger.
But vulgarity lives on, violently, through intimidation. One need only remember the rhetorical masturbation of the “flip-flop.”
In the art world, the confrontation with vulgarity is aestheticized, and thus inevitably in your face. Senior writer Liz Brown investigates the alleged impurity that ensues when art mixes with business. The stock exchange-style auction houses and the cocktail party gallery scene are about anything but the autonomous, elevated work. Art Basel, anyone? And with splashy, self-aggrandizing profiles of New York’s most admired young artists hitting mid-level weeklies (New York, Jan. 15, 2007), never is the model of the corporate artist more debatable. What does it mean to pursue art as a trade?
Margaret Livits turns our eye on Nan Kempner (page 6), noted fashion icon and avowed foe of vulgarity. Ariel Karlin explores the shameless pursuit of shock value with an analysis of the pulse-manipulating advertising that has taken trailers to the trailer park.
Learn it all in The Eye, for as Oscar Wilde once said, “Vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.”