"The very best modern American artists, by contrast, have not accepted the narrow restrictions imposed by pop culture."

‘Masterpieces’ Without Masters

Devaluing the word, delegitimizing the concept

TERRY TEACHOUT / JUNE 16, 2016

"The very best modern American artists, by contrast, have not accepted the narrow restrictions imposed by pop culture. They go their own way—and do their own work. Not only are novels like Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, plays like Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, musical compositions like Aaron Copland’s Piano Sonata, paintings like Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles, ballets like Jerome Robbins’s Dances at a Gathering, and buildings like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater more expressively ambitious than their popular counterparts, but they were not conceived collectively. As a result, they reflect in every way the creative visions of their makers, whose styles are personal to a degree that no collectively made work of art can hope to rival. They are masterpieces in the purest sense of the word."