ABSTRACT
As Giacometti said, “Que ça rate, que ça réussisse, après tout, c'est secondaire” (It's unimportant, in the end, whether a work succeeds or fails). I would be surprised if Giacometti believed that, or wanted it to be taken literally: the maxim works, I would like to think, as a spell, ensuring the insouciance that he needed when the quality of art was put so continuously into question. I would read the line differently if it had been said by Warhol, because then it might be a slap at the outmoded values of fine-art pundits. There are various ways to claim that the history of painting from 1900 to 2000 has no hierarchies or high points apart from the contexts that made them appear so, or alternately that the ways I have been describing hierarchies and high points are not sensible or relevant. I will mention three ways: visual studies, newspaper art criticism, and historiographic studies in art history.
