Page 48 - Studio International - June 1968

Greenberg and the group: a retrospective view

Pa rt 2

Barbara M. Reise

This is the second part of an analysis of the style, development, and influence of Clement Greenberg as an art critic. In
our last issue, Miss Reise discussed the history of Greenberg's career from his 'discovery' of Pollock in the 1940s and his
position in relation to Harold Rosenberg as a leading critic of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, to his presentation of
`Post Painterly Abstraction' as the road to High Art in the 1960s. Here she presents her evaluation of Greenberg's criticism
and his influence on other American critics.

The philosophical form of Greenberg's historiography is quasi- Greenberg's statements and respectful footnoting to each others'
dialectic progress in linear evolution; it is influenced by Marx, later ideas leads one to believe that they are unaware that any alternative
dominated by Mölfflin, and thus tied to pre-Darwinian thought and view of art exists. Their sense of history is equally linear, their pen-
to Hegel. His vision is limited to the optical form and mechanics of chant for cubby-holing art into purist media and style label is more
artistic material, untouched by emotional or conceptual associations; pronounced, and choices of whom to write about are almost hyp-
to style abstracted into formal movements; to movements limited by notically repetitive of Greenberg's 1960s enthusiasms." The quali-
national boundaries and temporal epochs : a vision which corre- tative excellence of being in the forefront of Greenberg's progressive
sponds artistically to the Impressionists and critically to Bernard Modernism is so pervasive an assumption among them that they
Berenson and Heinrich Wölfflin. Thus his historiographical vision plot artists' positions like sportscasters describing a horse-race.
plants Greenberg's art-historical form firmly in the nineteenth Michael Fried praises Ron Davis' works because they 'place him,
century. Since the content of his art history is twentieth century art, along with Stella and Bannard, at the forefront of his generation';39
some interesting disparities between form and content occur; and Rosalind Krauss deprecates De Kooning's recent paintings because
in his later writings it is apparent that Greenberg's art history they seem to her `like nervous attempts to somehow re-enter the
warps contemporary art to the shape of its own inflexible form. dialogue of advanced painting' while missing the (to her) major
The scope of Modern art is reduced in Greenberg's later writings point 'that other artists have entirely reformulated the question of
to a narrow line between Impressionism, (Analytical) Cubism, late measurement'.40
(Synthetic) Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, and Post-Painterly Mrs Krauss's essay on De Kooning shares honours with Sidney
Abstraction.34 Reading only Greenberg, one would never know of Tillim's recent essay on Lichtenstein41 as an example of uncritical
the existence of (using similar style labels) Symbolism, Futurism, acceptance of Greenberg's approach producing insensitive criticism
Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism, Pop Art and mixed-media of artists too big for the philosophy. Lichtenstein's change of
Happenings. This warping of the total picture necessitates a biased pictorial reference from popular comic and advertising imagery of
view on the art which is discussed. In his single essay on 'After the 1940s to popular architectural design of the 1930s is interpreted
Abstract Expressionism' there are three excellent examples of by Tillim as a fashionable nostalgia inferior to Bonnie and Clyde, a
distorted history: his absurd assertion that Noland and Louis were use of late Cubism inferior to that of David Smith, and a feeling for
not influenced by Newman's and Rothko's paintings ;35 his mis- thirties design less assimilated than Frank Stella's; he also interprets
leading implication that Newman, Rothko, and Still developed it as going 'abstract' and respectfully reports Greenberg as saying
their colour-field paintings after participating in the 'painterliness' of `that Lichtenstein has proved that abstraction painting is fashionable
Abstract Expressionism;36 and his demeaning presentation of again', and forecasts (hopefully) 'the end of Pop art as we know it'.
Abstract Expressionism as only a formal, still Cubist, statement.37 Krauss and Tillim toll the death knell on artistic styles on the
This Greenbergian distortion of art and history insures the sub- `objective' basis that the art changed from their own labelled-
jectivity of his evaluations of art, no matter how 'objective' he believes concept of it. Their concern with the death of Art by art shows an
his arguments to be. It is no more an objective compliment to be antagonism naturally arising from the conflict between their concept
included in his history of Modern Masters than exclusion is an and the lively irreverence of art to it, an antagonism which reaches a
objective damnation to the realm of Kitsch. It is despite their rele- passionate peak in the writings of Greenberg's most committed
vance to Greenberg's philosophizing that the work of Newman, follower, Michael Fried.
Rothko, Noland, Louis, Smith and Caro has artistic merit. `Art and Objecthood'42 is Fried's garrulous attack on the work of
The sad thing is that this fact has not been apparent to Greenberg's Robert Morris, Don Judd, and Tony Smith as presenting objects
followers, some of whose writings show blind adherence to his in a basically theatrical dialogue with the viewer; his analysis of the
philosophy as if it were a true criterion for qualitative evaluation. work of these 'Minimalists' is taken from Greenberg with changed
In the writings of his Harvard-student disciples, Rosalind Krauss, labels,43 but his rather war-hawkish assertions that 'theatre
Jane Harrison Cone, and Michael Fried, the constant quoting of and theatricality are at war today, not simply with modernist paint-
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