Not your run-of-the-millenium sort of lists

The madness began in earnest this summer, when the American Film Institute (AFI) issued its list of the 100 greatest American films and Random House published its list of the 100 greatest English-language novels of the century. Both of these lists were heavily criticized for their highly partisan natures, as each was published by a group with a vested interest in proclaiming certain works as masterpieces. While no equally well-publicized list has been published for the best art of the century, it is not too hard to imagine the Museum of Modern Art's 100 Greatest Artworks of the Century, brought to you by Coca-Cola and Amazon.com.

Not that I'm bitter. Notwithstanding the commercial co-opting of the critic's position as arbiter of aesthetic value, these lists do serve to promote discussion of what makes certain works of art great. Plus, they provide a chance to compare how the tastes of the masses compare with the tastes of the aesthetes.

A Random Houth lithp

Critics quickly disparaged the Random House "great books" list issued last summer as suspiciously chock-full of titles published by none other than Random House. Nonetheless, the list provoked mass discussion, including debate over whether enough women had been included. The list inspired everything from Erica Jong's alternative list of the best books of the century written by female authors to Steve Martin's New Yorker humor piece "The 100 Best Books I've Read."

The problem with a list of this sort is obvious; after all, what are the guidelines for what makes a book worthy of inclusion on the list? While the jurors of the Random House list may have thought that James Joyce's Ulysses was the finest novel written in English this century, the average reader may find Joyce overblown, pointless, and thoroughly unreadable. The most irksome element of the book list, however, must be the fact that the most recent book on it was published in 1982. The idea that not one worthy book has been published in almost 20 years is questionable, to say the least. Were the listmakers implying that Don DeLillo, Mark Helprin, and David Foster Wallace are unworthy simply because their books are not old and musty yet?

To remedy the bitter taste of the Random House list in my mouth, I asked some Yale professors to come up with their own lists of the great written works of the 20th century. English professor Wai Chee Dimock came up with three favorites: William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Henry James' The Wings of the Dove, and the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Professor Michael Thurston, who teaches poetry, compiled his list of great 20th-century poetry in two parts--those poems that most people were already familiar with as great poetry, and poems that may have not gotten the respect they deserve. His first list consists of Ezra Pound's "Cantos," T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning," W.B. Yeats' "Among School Children," and Rainer Marie Rilke's "The Duino Elegies." His list of lesser-knowns includes Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead," W.H. Auden's "Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love," Michael Harper's "American History," Mina Loy's "Love Songs for Joannes," and Gillian Clarke's "Marged."

You gotta have art

Art this century has gone through a whirlwind of change, beginning with the Impressionists working at the turn of the century, through the Cubists and Dadaists of the 1920s and 1930s, the post-war Abstract Expressionists, Pop artists, and onward to the present-day jumble of artistic styles. How can one sort out a century that produced Picasso, Dalí, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Magritte, Pollock, Rothko, Warhol, and Johns into any sort of simplified list?

History of Art professor Thomas Crow was willing to take a shot, emphasizing the need for "balance between painting, sculpture, and conceptual art." His choices were Pablo Picasso's Guitar sculpture (1912), Jackson Pollock's Lucifer (1947), Richard Serra's Spin Out (for Robert Smithson) (1975), Martha Rosler's The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems (1974), and Gerhard Richter's 18 October 1977 series (1988). Intriguingly, Crow chose only two works to represent the entire first half of the century, 50 years rich with brilliant art. Also, how can any compilation of the best works of the century not include Andy Warhol, the man who practically made all of today's art possible?

Remove that icky film

I have a bone to pick. After the AFI issued its list of the 100 best American films (without consulting me), it instantly became the accepted standard. Every video store in the universe had an AFI Top 100 section, and it made me want to vomit. I won't even get into the reasons how AFI screwed up the selection process, which included presenting a pre-selected list of 400 films to voters, a list that included scintillating fare like Pretty Woman. The final list reflects nothing other than the abominable taste of the general public when it comes to film.

The final list included a shocking number of poor films--films that, though they may have won Oscars, do not deserve any kind of immortal recognition. Seriously, can anyone argue with a straight face that Dances With Wolves and The French Connection and Rocky are among the 100 best American films of the century? Also, what about all the great independent films that never got the audience they should have? Are these automatically undeserving of recognition? I would hate to think that masterpieces like The Night of the Hunter, Touch of Evil, or The Shop Around the Corner should go unappreciated based on the whims of a corporation with a vested interest in certain films' success. The one good thing to come out of the AFI list seems to be, like the Random House list, the widespread recognition of how arbitrary the list was. I only hope it provoked people to probe American film beyond the AFI Mediocre 100.

I think it's fair to say that this list-making isn't all bad. Inasmuch as it provokes debate and a desire to learn more about the subject at hand, I'm all in favor of it. My problem is that lists are so reductive and simplistic, they take a century of fascinating works, diversions, sidetracks, and curiosities, and make it into a cut-and-dried, dead list of "important art." Unless this unhealthy obsession slows down, we may someday find ourselves fascinated with Kraft's 100 Greatest Cheeses of All Time.

Graphics by Sara Edward-Corbett.

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