THE GREATEST ARTISTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: SECOND INTERIM REPORT ON SURVEY RESULTS (July 14, 2000)
Responses to my survey of the greatest artists of the Twentieth Century are now pouring in. After some cajoling, Mary Barone offered four artists only: Trisha Brown, Francis Ford Coppola, Duchamp, and Malevich. The film director is a welcome addition to the survey, of course. Sandy Starr wrote that his list would definitely include Escher, but he added that Picasso would undoubtedly make his list, too. I am now trying to persuade him to come up with the whole list. In his list, Richard Dyer reacted to the supremacy of male artists in the survey to date: Helen Frankenthal, Bridget Riley, Rachel Whiteread, Jenny Saville, Jane and Louise Wilson, Sarah Lucas, Tracy Emin, Gillian Ayers, and Gillian Wearing. Andrew Brighton offered two lists, the first of which includes the makers of paradigms: Beuys, De Chirico, Duchamp, Graham, Johns, Kandinsky, Malevich, Matisse, Miró, Mondrian, Nauman, Newman, Picasso, Pollock, Rodchenko, Smith, Tatlin, and Warhol. The second list, which includes the consolidators, is unbounded and could be much longer, wrote Andrew: Aitken, Bacon, Balka, Beckman, Bourgeois, Burin, Caro, Chagal, Dalí, Deineka, Douglas, Hamilton, Hoch, Kiefer, Leger, Maillol, Polke, Sera, Sickert, Wyeth… Ella Guru wrote that she was a bit stuck (ha!) with this survey, but wondered how Charles Thomson, her fellow Stuckist, would react to so many votes for Beuys so far in the survey. Lauren wrote that she could not offer a list of artists: “We live in an artistic moment not defined by any particular mastery but perhaps the absence of it.” She is after the “unnameable,” as are many other artists. Indeed, Helen Wilks wrote that most artists would feel uneasy about the survey: “Artists themselves should vacillate in pinning things down—like making lists, for example—but they should hold steady onto something bigger than all of us.” Again, I agree, I most definitely agree, and yet I am dying to see more lists!