Page 39 - Studio International - May 1968

wanting to evaluate the paintings as objects in galleries ;18 and it is artists as creators of serious Art.24
hardly surprising that his important essay on 'The American Action Greenberg's failure to predict and inability to discuss—or even 'see' —
Painters'19 has been universally misunderstood and reduced to a this type of art seriously threatened his established position as Pro-
label for thrown paint. phet of Future Trends. Museums and galleries which had been
The fact that his rival's 1952 label of 'Action Painting' caught on sufficiently 'avant-garde' to embrace Abstract Expressionism rapidly
quickly and misleadingly infuriated Greenberg, and the two men supported this 'new movement' in the early 'sixties; critics of indis-
began quarrelling." The ensuing argument encouraged both to putable intelligence and art-historical training like Leo Steinberg,
refine their stands in mutual opposition, and each became more Henry Geldzahler, and Robert Rosenblum discussed it seriously. But
fixed in his own approach. But Greenberg's didactic prose, references Greenberg was naturally alienated by its use of representation, con-
to the history of modern art, and analyses of formal properties of ceptual wit, and sources from 'low', commercial, popular imagery.
exhibited art made his ideas more accessible to critics and the count- He described Jasper Johns's paintings in terms of 'homeless repre-
less art-history and painting students who discovered Abstract Ex- sentation' which was part of the 'degenerate mannerisms' of art
pressionism in the late 'fifties. With the 1961 publication of his `After Abstract Expressionism'.25 He collectively labelled Pop art a
collected and smoothly re-written essays and his continued interest `fashion' and a 'school' which in general 'amounts to a new episode
in the latest things shown in galleries, Greenberg's stature to the in the history of taste, not to an authentically new episode in the
newly-arrived was truly monumental. evolution of contemporary art.'26
During the 1960s, the tone of Greenberg's criticism changed. In the Greenberg's own version of 'a new episode in that evolution' of
'forties, and to a lesser degree in the 'fifties, it had been obviously (authentic) art was 'Post Painterly Abstraction'.27 He characterized
passionate, avowedly personal, conveying a real impression of direct this type of painting formally as emphasizing 'physical openness' and
confrontation with his artistic enthusiasms. In the 'sixties it has be- `linear clarity' of design, and high-keyed, even-valued colour. This
come more didactic, concerned with philosophy and history, re- rather superficial description28 easily suited the recent work of
moved from concrete aesthetic encounters, and seemingly sure of its Greenberg's 1953-54 authentic discoveries, Morris Louis and Ken-
own objectivity. His early penchants for discussing art in terms of neth Noland; to no one's surprise, their paintings figured prominently
form rather than content, cubist and late cubist form, purist media in the exhibition.29 In support of his presentation of this type of
categories, and an evolving linear progression abstracted from painting as the (only) authentic contemporary art, Greenberg turned
artists' lives and historic events were noted by some critics after to the philosophy of art history of Heinrich Wölffiin which abstrac-
reading his book.21 In the 'sixties, these penchants rigidified into ted 'painterly' (malerisch) and 'linear' form from Baroque and
dogma: allowing only art which conformed to Greenberg's philo- Renaissance art and pronounced their inevitable dialectic evolution
sophy of art history to be considered as 'authentic', 'serious', 'high' throughout art history." In contrast to the 'painterly abstraction'
art in his discussions. Greenberg perceived in Abstract Expressionism, this 'post-painterly
This increasingly defensive and academic stance against the sub- abstraction' fell neatly into Wölffiin's alternative category, while
jective nature of aesthetic judgements, recently defended by Green- continuing 'a tendency' begun 'inside Painterly Abstraction itself, in
berg in the face of rising criticism,22 was begun under the influence the work of artists like Still, Newman, Rothko, Motherwell, Gottlieb,
of two historical phenomena around 1962: the threat to his taste and Mathieu, the 1950-54 Kline, and even Pollock'.
critical assumptions in the success of Pop art in the New York art If Greenberg seems incredibly naive in presenting this philosophy
world; and the enthusiastic respect for his approach and experience of form-history as proof of the artistic value of paintings in the 'Post
from the American art-historical academic establishment. For it was Painterly Abstraction' exhibition, it is partly because he assumed
between 1961 and 1963 that Greenberg's involvement began with that its truth had been argued convincingly in his essay on 'After
three Harvard post-graduate students of art history: Michael Fried, Abstract Expressionism' two years before.31 There he had argued
Rosalind Krauss, and Jane Harrison Cone. Their academic training that Abstract Expressionism was essentially a formal revolution, 'a
in formal analysis of a quasi-dialectical evolution of styles comple- painterly reaction against the tightness of Synthetic Cubism, com-
mented Greenberg's approach; and their espousal of Greenberg as bined with what remained an essentially Cubist feeling for design',
Guru provided an implicit corroboration of his methodology by which fitted— and corroborated —Wölfflin's theory.32 Corresponding to
gilt-edged academic credentials." Greenberg's own experience in current Harvard art-historical modifications of Wölfflin's approach,
leading a seminar on criticism at Princeton in 1958 could only have Greenberg found an intermediary style whose roots were in the latest
accentuated his receptivity to the academic framework in which he formal revolution :33 'Still, Newman, and Rothko turn away from the
was moving, encouraging his efforts to find meaningful principles of painterliness of Abstract Expressionism as though to save the objects
history and form which would bring order and 'objectivity' to his of painterliness—colour and openness—from painterliness itself.' For
subjective rejection of Johns, Rauschenberg, Happenings, and Pop Greenberg, these men's paintings 'point to ... the only way to high
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