Hilton Kramer, redux
Earlier today, I wrote about the passing of my friend and colleague Hilton Kramer. I have been gratified by the many thoughtful memorials that have appeared about him.
There have been a few of the other sort, too, most of which may be left entirely to the instant oblivion their obtuseness guarantees. There is a detail in one of these exercises in futility, however, that I wish to correct. It appears on artnet. In the course of his effusion, the writer asserts that Hilton was “fired” from The New York Times. In fact, he left, joyfully, of his own accord and, far from being fired, his immediate boss Arthur Gelb took him to lunch yearly for the better part of a decade to offer him his job back.
It’s not clear to me who the writer is or who reads artnet. I never heard of it before and was only alerted to its existence by a friend who sent me the link to this obnoxious piece. But random assertions from strange places can occasionally take on the lineaments of fact and I thought it was worth correcting the record.
Malice trumps fact. It gives a satisfaction to some among us that rough and stuffy fact can never equal.
Many of us in the South have never thought well of the NYTimes, but when Mr. Kramer was art critic for them, I read the newspaper, mostly for his column. I hardly need say that he was an excellent critic.
Even if he were fired from the NYTimes (which he wasn’t), that would not have tarnished his reputation one jot or iota.
He will be missed.
I was an acquaintance after his move to Maine some years ago. While we differed on certain representational artists–notably the Wyeths–who fell outside (his) modernist canon, I respected his consistency and passion for the work he loved. He will be missed and, as noted by many, the world of art criticism is diminished by his loss. Rest in Peace, Hilton.
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