Am I the only person to have spotted the social significance of Roz Chast’s Cremaster-bashing back-page cartoon in the June 9 issue of the New Yorker? (It’s not on line, alas, but it’s definitely worth looking up.) Back in the days of Harold Ross, the New Yorker wasn’t above publishing cartoons that made fun of abstract expressionism, but ever since Jackson Pollock became God, they’ve been careful not to make that kind of mistake again–until now. Chast chronicled a visit to the Guggenheim Museum by a frazzled-looking lady who made no bones about being utterly befuddled by Matthew Barney’s much-ballyhooed Cremaster Cycle: “I do not understand this at all…I must be a complete idiot…I’ll reread the brochure…No help there…I’ll just stare at the art until something comes through.”
To her infinite credit, Chast didn’t play both sides of the street, which would have been all too easy to do. Instead, she suggested what I take to be her own jaundiced opinion of the fawning critical reaction to the Cremaster Cycle, for the funniest panel in the cartoon showed our frazzled lady gazing at a jumbo wall label whose text reads as follows: “Matthew Barney blah blah blah blah blah Cremaster blah blah blah blah blah blah referencing blah blah metaphor blah blah narrator blah blah blah differentiate blah.” (Over her head floated a puzzled thought balloon: “Maybe I should reread this explanation.”)
I loathe the modish usage of the word “subversive,” which more often than not is code for “PC,” but I do think there is something quite genuinely subversive about the fact that Roz Chast, of all people, felt free to make fun of Matthew Barney in the New Yorker, of all places. Or could it be that I didn’t get it? Maybe I should reread this cartoon….