Wolfe criticized avant-garde art, Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock.

[4] "The Painted Word hit the art world like a really bad, MSG-headache-producing, Chinese lunch," wrote Rosalind E. Krauss in Partisan Review.

[6][7] Other critics responded with such similar vitriol and hostility that Wolfe said their response demonstrated that the art community only talked to each other.

An artist compared him to "A six-year-old at a pornographic movie; he can follow the action of the bodies but he can't comprehend the nuances."

The reviewer viewed Wolfe's lack of a suggestion for what should replace modern art as similar in its obtuseness to statements Linda Lovelace made about Deep Throat being a "kind of goof.

"[5] In defense of critics Rosenberg, Greenberg, and Steinberg, Rosalind Krauss noted that each man wrote about art "in ways that are entirely diverse.

"[5] Writing in Newsweek, Douglas Davis wrote that The Painted Word fails because of how it departed from Wolfe's previous works.