The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.

Tom Wolfe made this argument in the midst of his polemic against the postwar American art world, where he believed taste and prestige were being set by a closed circuit of critics, curators, dealers, collectors, and museum administrators rather than by a broad viewing public. The remark reflects Wolfe’s broader thesis that, in modern and contemporary art, reputations are often manufactured through institutional endorsement and critical theory, with the public encountering “winners” only after decisions have effectively been made. It belongs to Wolfe’s satirical, journalistic critique of how avant‑garde movements are canonized and monetized in the late 20th century.

Wolfe is arguing that “public taste” is largely irrelevant to what becomes canonized as modern art. In his view, reputations are made inside a closed ecosystem—critics, curators, dealers, collectors, and institutions—who set the rules, anoint winners, and allocate prestige and money. By the time the broader public encounters the work, the verdict has already been rendered and reinforced through exhibitions, reviews, and market prices. The line is a critique of cultural gatekeeping: it suggests that modern art’s authority rests less on democratic reception than on insider consensus and institutional power, turning the public into spectators of decisions made elsewhere.