ART : The Lowdown on ‘Contemporary Style’ Versus ‘Point of View’ : A reader asks about the difference between the two, as seen by a critic. Well, in so many words, here’s the brutal truth.

Jules Margolis, a professor of economics who retired a year ago “to realize an inchoate feeling that I wanted to sculpt,” has written a long and articulate letter asking for more information about contemporary art. Hey, only too happy to oblige.

“You wrote in your article of Aug. 13,” the letter read, “that ‘the type of contemporary art I review is work in a contemporary style, with a contemporary point of view.’ There are three parts to that sentence, which I hope you can elaborate . . . .”

In other words, what is “contemporary style” and what is a “contemporary point of view?”

Uh-oh. Margolis’ final exams at UC Irvine must have been the kind a student really had to sweat over.

Margolis said examples of his own work were included in a summer exhibit of work by students of painter Frank Dixon at the Art Store Gallery in Newport Beach. He said some of his “critical friends” seemed to be telling him that the work in the show “did not have a contemporary style.” This puzzled him.

“Unfortunately, there are some curators, scholars, critics and artists who become so involved in one ‘style’ that they revere it to the exclusion of other styles,” Margolis wrote. “I do not believe that there is a one-to-one mapping between current culture and a current art style.

“Unless contemporary is a code word referring to a specific perspective, I do not understand how it is used. You reject as irrelevant the fact that the work may have a high sales potential. However, I am still enough of an economist to know that the market is the best indicator of demand and of responsiveness to the contemporary culture.

“The painting that sells is in touch with ‘current’ tastes and preferences. Instead of relying on the people who think enough of the work to pay for it, you take the preferences of curators, art curators, historians and fellow critics to judge what is contemporary. . . .”

Well, the short and brutal answer is: Yes, I’m using contemporary as a code word for a particular perspective, based on an understanding of the world as a cacophony of different beliefs and special interests, in which notions of “high” and “low” culture have become inextricably intertwined.

Artists frequently can illuminate this highly relativistic world by linking heavyweight subjects to seemingly insignificant subjects or objects--from such realms as advertising imagery, schlock art, educational manuals, verbal cliches or even waste materials--in startling and unpredictable ways.

The important thing isn’t the specific “style” of a given work. What is important is the way in which the artist--who is assumed to be highly aware of the history of styles in art--shows us something previously unperceived or unarticulated about life. As part of its war against traditional dictates of art, this critical view frequently bypasses traditional notions of quality (such as, how finely crafted is this object?) in favor of the force and inimitability of the artist’s point of view.

This general perspective is shared in greater or lesser degree--sometimes, with elaborate theoretical underpinnings--by many visual arts writers for the major magazines. Other commentators--including Hilton Kramer in the journal the New Criterion--retain a conservative outlook that frowns upon what they see as a sorry slippage of quality in art today.

Art today is a highly specialized field. There are different intellectual camps that support different approaches to art, just as there are Keynesians and monetarists in the field of economics, behaviorists and cognitive psychologists in psychology, and so forth.

But one thing is certain: During the past century, critics, curators and historians have not been in accord with the taste of the general public on the value of contemporary art. Ever since the advent of Post-Impressionism, Cubism and the other late-19th and early 20th-Century “isms,” notable styles in art have run counter to the tastes and interests of the masses.

Three hundred years ago, a fresco in a cathedral could be both a recognized masterpiece and an image revered by the most unschooled worshiper. Today, both the styles and the themes of art frequently dismay and discombobulate “lay” viewers. That is one of the prices we pay for living in a society that is extremely pluralistic and intensely specialized.

It makes sense to talk about the validating power of the market when you’re discussing, say, Hollywood movies. By its nature, the Hollywood movie is a business proposition, a costly vehicle made by a team of people to satisfy a mass audience. But a work of art is made by a single individual to satisfy him or herself.

The history of art is to a large degree the history of style and taste. But when Margolis writes that “the painting that sells” is “in touch with current tastes,” he misses the boat.

The point is not just to reflect whatever people seem to be thinking or believing at the moment--that’s the job of magazine articles and TV specials. No, the job of the artist is to stay one jump ahead: To reconsider and rearrange aspects of contemporary life from different perspectives, to experiment with ideas and imagery with no immediate concern for how they might play to the public.

Genuinely popular works of art today tend to reflect only a watered-down, no-sweat version of significant contemporary themes in art. It often takes a great leap of faith, wit and intuition to perceive just what an artist is saying, and most people simply don’t have the time, inclination or knowledge to make that leap.

The kind of work Margolis and his fellow students are doing in Dixon’s class struck me as interchangeable with many exhibitions of beginning-level art. There is a lot of color, a lot of activity, a lot of “expressive” distortion going on here, but there are no discernible fresh ideas. Nothing seemed worth reviewing--as opposed to giving a classroom-style critique--because everybody was just jumping in and learning to do the dead man’s float.

The problem really wasn’t the “style” of these works because they showed only the faintest awareness of style as an issue in itself. Contemporary painting of critical interest tends to indicate a skeptical awareness of the history of styles; routine work tends to cling unquestioningly to worn-out models from the past.

Which brings me to another of Margolis’ queries: “Should a critic try to avoid the temptation of creativity?” he asks, meaning the way I and my colleagues add our personal interpretation of a work of art as well as describing qualities that are more or less obvious to everyone.

Well, part of the process of looking at art is figuring out what it means--what it means to you , that is. Some reviewers feel OK about talking to the artist about his or her work before writing the review. Others, myself included, prefer to keep our own counsel. Which is not to say that we don’t occasionally do some homework to bone up on a particular movement or theory, or to find out more about an artist’s earlier output. Of course, one thing we reviewers never want to do is to let the artist--or another writer--do our thinking for us.

But no matter what kind of research we may do, our real job is to interpret the art as we see it. It doesn’t matter whether the artist thought about all those things when he or she made the piece. And it’s OK if other reviewers and viewers disagree. The point of reviewing isn’t to lay down the law but to begin a dialogue with readers and viewers: “I think this, for these reasons--what do you think?”

Contrary to what you might think, a critic’s ideal readers are not always full of praise and agreement. It’s great to hear from people who are plainly intelligent, feisty and curious, and unwilling to take any guff. Hello out there--are there more of you dying to give a reviewer a hard time?