Slobbering on the corpse?

If you paid attention to press coverage of the artist Robert Rauschenberg's passing this week, you're 1) unusual, and 2) probably of the same mind as Jack Schafer, the outstanding media writer for Slate.

Here's the lead on his post regarding Rauschenburg's demise -- with the unfortunate headline, "Puffing Rauschenberg: The dailies slobber all over the corpse of Robert Rauschenberg":

The solemn tributes to Robert Rauschenberg in today's newspapers prove that you're more likely to encounter an independent mind operating in the sports pages than the arts section. Hoisting his reputation high and escorting it into paradise, critics from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Wall Street Journal write as if toeing the correct line handed down by some cultural commissar.

Schafer's right on. You'd think Leonardo himself (and I don't mean DiCaprio) had died in his prime. The uniformity of hyperbole in the writing about this celebrity artist was breathtaking, which says more about how pitifully limited media coverage is of fine arts -- and how the opinions of a few critics and collectors from the New York art world tend to color what little news is reported.

Rauschenberg was a major figure in American art, but Schafer correctly notes how the art world is so incestuously self-dealing at times like these:

I don't hold the press gang's reverential treatment of Rauschenberg against the artist. He was only selling. They're the ones who bought, bought again, and continue to toss coins into his grave.