Page 50 - Studio International - October 1970

Marxist view of culture which raises its hands in persuade us or induce us to read into it a third present, but on the intensity and depth of such
horror at the social effects of capitalism, and dimension, which is not really there and so significances'43, and has continually to stress the
endorses the withdrawal of art from the political liberates 'art from the objective totality of spatial importance of 'quality' above 'meaning'.
and social struggle in order to preserve it as the condition by being limited to a plane surface'.37 In fact, it is capitalism itself which destroys
last repository of human values, thus confirming In fact real space here means ideal space—a space all scales of value by reducing quality to
art's isolated and specialized position. In this created in the mind by means of what is really quantity; by making all products equivalent in
context it is particularly significant that an illusion—which gives us an escape from the the quantitative terms of commodity exchange
Greenberg nowhere mentions the possibility of world which contains things we bump into, in which a certain number of one product will
proletarian revolution, which would indeed and, by extension, from the world of society, full equal a certain number of each one of all the rest.
represent a 'practical collision, in which the of particulars which cannot be reconciled. This For this reason, 'Viewed from the standpoint of
class itself is endangered', and substitutes is the Hegelian 'solution' to the problem of the objective relations of capitalist society, the
instead industrial progress as the force for social industrialized society: a solution in the mind, greatest work of art is equal to a certain quantity
change. Logically enough, where for Marxists whose practical political conclusion is a of manure'44, and for this reason 'even the
the appropriate behaviour is 'the identification monarchical, authoritarian constitution which, highest forms of spiritual production are
of the artist's individuality with a definite by subsuming all individuals into a higher recognized and forgiven by the bourgeoisie only
political principle, in the open and vigorously category of thought— the ideal, unifying State— because they (artists, men of letters etc.) are
stressed "dialect and accent" of a political will reconcile the social atomism of bourgeois represented and falsely labelled as direct
party'33, Greenberg suggests that 'until this new society. By contrast, the creation of the object is producers of material wealth'.45 Art as
industrial type of high civilization emerges, a form of realism, which tries to avoid the investment coincides with the growth of
Eliot's conservative position will continue to be `meaning' that earlier realism was concerned bourgeois society, and the bourgeois search for
tenable'.34 with. Since realism derives itself from the `quality' in all art. It is not true that there has
empirical and positivist philosophy of bourgeois always been general agreement about the quality
II culture, any meaning in realism would tend to of art, as Greenberg suggests. The notion stems
One of Greenberg's most interesting qualities is support that culture. In reacting against the from the reduction of art to commodity which
his ability, in much of his specific criticism, to culture, artists retain the observable particular, permitted the bourgeois search for saleable
document precisely the problems of an art based stripped of its significance. In doing this they objects from any culture, past or present,
largely on pre-Marxist philosophies of culture. move from the possibility of creating a critical regardless of their original cultural significance;
He describes with considerable sensitivity the realism, which early bourgeois empiricism and it was this which created the idea of a
movement of modern art away from realism and offered, to the mere 'pointing out' of positivism. universal taste, a sensibility attuned to quality
the development of its polarities between idealist Greenberg says of French painting since in any form. Since it is a universal category
abstraction on the one hand and pure object on Courbet that its 'concern with the physical has stripping the object of all local and particular
the other. Viewing art historically, he relates this reflected the conscious and unconscious meaning, the idea of quality can in fact only
process to social pressures and events. positivism that informs the bourgeois industrial derive itself from money. The search for quality
Describing the rise of an art of 'opposition' he ethos'.38 However, 'after 1920 the positivism of in art is a parallel activity to the equally
says, 'without the circulation of revolutionary the school of Paris, which depended in part on international search for goods, labour and
ideas in the air about them, they' (the artists) the assumption that infinite prospects of markets in the economic field. In this sense, the
`would never have been able to isolate their technical advance lay ahead of both society and critic's sensibility becomes not a response to the
concept of the "bourgeois" in order to define art, lost faith in itself. It began to be suspected meaning of a work of art but the expertise of
what they were not. Nor, without the moral aid that the physical in art was as historically an investment broker, distorting the nature of
of revolutionary political attitudes would they limited as capitalism itself had turned out to be. art as free communication addressed to the
have had the courage to assert themselves as Mondrian looked like the hand writing on the whole of society, into commodities for the rich.
aggressively as they did against the prevailing wall.'3 Once again Greenberg's description The capacity of capitalism to absorb even the
standards of society.'35 He continues, 'Yet it is illustrates the artistic choice between abstraction most 'avant-garde' art makes gestures towards a
true that once the avant garde had succeeded in and an art of 'materialism' whose 'center of non-commodity art, e.g. art labelled 'not art',
"detaching" itself from society, it proceeded to gravity was immediate sensation'40, and here the pointless, since the meaning is never important
abandon and repudiate revolutionary as well as situation is explicitly linked to social processes. anyway; it's all money if it sells.
bourgeois politics.'36 Elsewhere, however, he abandons a historical As Istvan Meszaros points out, 'The main
However, even with this insight, Greenberg view of art, and locates developments not in the reason why art suffers in capitalist society is that
in his actual criticism implicitly accepts this state artist's response to reality, but to the meeting of it is difficult, if not impossible, to secure in the
of affairs, because his philosophy is inadequate a demand: 'Modernist painting meets our desire prevailing circumstances the necessary
for a real analysis. He is only able to describe the for the literal and positive by renouncing the conditions for the mode of consumption
choices open to modern art from within. The illusion of the third dimension.'4 And again: adequate to the true nature of art.'" In its true
two forms which he describes art as taking in `The dissolution of the pictorial, into apparently nature a work of art is neither an object of
the twentieth century are, as we have seen, sheer sensation, into an accumulation of utility nor a possession nor a production for
idealist abstraction and the self-contained, self- repetition, seems to speak for and answer immediate need; but in a situation where all
consistent object. Both derive from the two, something profound in contemporary produced objects are for utilization, the work of
apparently opposed, philosophies of early sensibility... The "all-over" may answer the art is consumed incorrectly and the artist is
industrial society. Idealist abstraction is feeling that all hierarchical distinctions have forced to become not only producer but also the
concerned to find unifying principles in the been literally exhausted, and invalidated, that `correct' consumer of his own work. 'The "free"
experience of art, which are so lacking in the no one order of experience is intrinsically modern artist presents his public with a ready-
experience of the real world. The two essential superior on any final scale of values, to any made product—a saleable commodity in fact. All
ways in which this is done are either the other order of experience.' 42 In other words, a that is left to the public is to assume the role of a
presentation of abstract relationships, or the fine art which once had communicable ideas, is passive consumer ... there can be only one
creation of so-called 'real' space. Both represent reduced to stating its own helplessness, to measure of approval and success : money.'47 The
a triumph over materialism and the chaos of revealing its true condition. For this reason `freedom' and 'independence' of the artist,
unrelated particulars by appealing to the order of Greenberg has to say that 'More and less in art which appears to allow him to criticise society
mind. In creating 'real' space, painting can do not depend on how many significances are from a 'higher' cultural plane, becomes, in fact,

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