Page 18 - Studio International - September 1970

Art criticism: Greenberg is partly attributable to the fact sure guide through art is your capacity to
that these obsequious introductory phrases discern these degrees.'
authority are usually followed by such resounding It would be difficult to find a more explicit
platitudes that one would scarcely have
statement. It seems to me perfectly un-
thought it necessary to ascribe them to an ambiguous and—as I shall argue—entirely
and argument authority; and in part it is due to the greater false.
confidence that seems to be vested locally in It is my intention to work through these four
the voice of authority than in the power of opinions, showing for each that if it is not
Donald Brook argument. positively untenable, at least an alternative
I should like to consider four of the intimately view is available that is more attractive. It is
(MR GREENBERG'S LECTURE, 'AVANT—GARDE connected views that lie at the theoretical quite impossible to treat such complex matters
ATTITUDES: NEW ART IN THE SIXTIES', WITH foundation of Mr Greenberg's critical prac- as these exhaustively in a very short space,
WHICH MR DONALD BROOK TAKES ISSUE IN tice; about which varying degrees of scepti- and I have tried to confine myself in each
THIS ARTICLE, WAS DELIVERED AT THE cism, from strong reservation to outright case to a single main argument, with a few
UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, IN MAY contradiction, seem to me appropriate. I shall ancillary points.
1968. IT WAS REPRINTED IN 'STUDIO try, first of all, to state these views in such a On the question of the evolution of art
INTERNATIONAL' APRIL 1970, PP. 142-145.) way that their author would not disown them. history—the mainstream theory—and the dia-
They are : lectical oscillation between painterly and
1 That the history of art is one of linear evo- linear styles, there is unhappily no single
lution of styles. The principal styles, that form simple argument that will do the necessary
the so-called 'mainstream', succeed each business. First, it is worth remarking that it is
other in a dialectical fashion, alternating really a theory about painting; and that there
between 'painterly' and 'linear'. (An account is no good reason to identify visual arts with
of the background influences of Hegel, Marx, painting. Architecture and sculpture pose
Berenson and Mifflin in all this, is to be problems for the theory that require their
found in an illuminating article by Barbara discreet suppression to a background position.
Reise, called 'Greenberg and the Group', in Secondly, the linear-painterly dialectic adop-
Studio International, May and June 1968.) ted from Mifflin relates only to European
2 That this concern with styles in art is one painting since the Renaissance. And even
aspect of a notion of descriptive objectivity reducing art to painting, and history to rela-
that encourages a kind of criticism called tively modern times in Europe, Mr Green-
`formal'. Formal considerations are supposed to berg's application of the system to the
refer to the qualities and structure of a work of twentieth century is highly selective and
art, in a special way that qualifies them strained.
uniquely as having relevance to art criticism. Thus, one hardly knows how to cope, on
3 That aesthetic judgements are' singular' `mainstream' theory, with the so-called 'non-
and 'subjective'. They are not descriptions or historical' styles: with prehistory, with the
empirical statements, and they are not Orient, with South America, Africa, Oceania,
arrived at by calculating, testing, or measuring the art of Australia's aboriginals, and so on.
against standards. The excellence of a work Do they each have their own mainstream?
of art is directly apprehended by a viewer. And how is one to place their excellence on the
(This idea derives, of course, from Kant, to one and only scale of artistic goodness ?
whom Mr Greenberg makes frequent acknow- Turning to Mr Greenberg's account of the
ledgement, as he also does to Benedetto twentieth-century mainstream: don't we find
Croce—but seldom to more recent philo- the dialectical progress from Impressionism
sophical ideas.) (which for the purpose of the exercise must be
An astonishing feature of the aftermath of 4 That there is only one linear scale of counted 'painterly') to Cubism (linear) and
Clement Greenberg's 1968 Power Lecture has aesthetic excellence, and each work of art thence to Abstract Expressionism (painterly
been the way that he stands revealed to us, possesses so many degrees of goodness on this again) and on to Post-Painterly Abstraction
locally, as all things to all men. Scarcely an scale. To quote from Mr Greenberg's 1968 (allegedly linear) doctrinaire, artificial, and
Australian critic has failed to remark, often Power Lecture: even, on reflection, quite absurd? Where is
and always with approval: 'As Clement [To speak of artistic values (plural) is con- Futurism? Where is figurative Expression-
Greenberg says ... ' or 'has reminded us ... ' fusion.] The only artistic value ...is ... ism? Dada? Surrealism? Constructivism?
or 'has pointed out ... '. And needless to say, the goodness of good art. There are, of Pop ? Assemblage ? Kinetics ? Environments ?
these critics don't agree with each other at all. course, degrees of goodness in art, degrees `They all lie outside the mainstream', is the
Their collective readiness to agree with of this one and only value. And your only dismissive reply, 'and are therefore not high

Contributors to this issue issue will be appearing in the first number of Circa 70 PATRICK HERON'S most recent exhibitions have been of
(Sydney) later this year. prints at Leslie Waddington's and of paintings at the
Caballa Gallery, Harrogate.
DONALD C. KARSHAN is Director of the New York
MICHAEL TYZACK will be exhibiting at the Central Street Cultural Center and a collector of and authority on JONATHAN BENTHALL is organising a series of 22 lectures
Gallery, Sydney, Australia, in April 1971. He is at prints. He has recently published a study of Alexander on ecology at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, to
present working on a commission for 12 shaped canvases Archipenko. begin on Wednesday, October 7.
for the new University Hospital of Wales.
PAUL OVERY has taught in schools and art colleges and WILLIAM TUCKER, the sculptor, has recently been
DONALD BROOK is art critic of the Sydney Morning Herald written criticism for The Listener, The Financial Times and Gregory Fellow at Leeds University. The fourth of his
and a senior lecturer at the Power Institute of Fine Arts New Society. He has published books on Kandinsky and articles on modern sculptors will be published in Studio
in the University of Sydney. His article printed in this de Stijl. International later this year.