Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg

- Harriet Farquhar

- Two of the most important art critics of the 20th century – esp. for Abstract Expressionism

- Michael J Lewis commented that Greenberg’s “nod of approval became popular opinion”

- “A few laconic paragraphs might launch a career or

cripple it. Where his favour came to rest…there followed national celebrity and success. At the peak of his power – so it is said – the number of paintings sold by an artist was a coefficient of the number of paragraphs he had bestowed upon the artist’s work”

Rosenberg is described as being “one of the most influential critics in the field of contemporary art” and the “most vocal proponent of the Abstract Expressionist movement”

Why the Importance of the Critics?

- Abstract Expressionism (which both critics championed) = and avant-garde movement

- Therefore, new to audiences. Critics provided explanations for what these radical works meant.

Rosenberg on the importance of critics:

“limited to the esthetic, the taste bureaucracies of Modern Art can not grasp the human experience involved in the new action paintings”. As a result of this, the movement needed “understanding – not just publicity”

Greenberg and Rosenberg had diametrically opposing views to art. It was these differences, claimed Herbert “that defined the parameters of the Abstract Expressionist critical discourse”

Clement Greenberg – “Abstract”

- Greenberg’s theory surrounding abstract expressionism was based on the concept of the ‘purity’ of art, “art for art’s sake”.

- Championed abstract expressionism as being a movement which removed art from all other humanist concerns – politics, popular culture, and instead drew on the art work itself for its concept.

Abstraction

As a result, he saw abstraction as being a necessary means of removing all other content from art work. The abstraction referred back to the painting itself, as opposed to the real world.

Flat Picture Plane

- A flat picture plane – which was a result of the artists no longer trying to represent 3D objects, necessary as it showed the artist was accepting the overriding fact of the medium.

- “Guarantee of the painting’s independence as an art…each art had to determine, through operations peculiar to itself, the effects peculiar and exclusive to itself” because “flatness two-dimensionality, was the only condition painting shared with no other art.”

Formalist Qualities of Art

- Greenberg is considered a formalist critic - his assessment of the value of an art work lay in its formal characteristics.

- Believed that although form was not the total of art, it provided the only firm basis on which to make judgements on both the quality and character of different works of art, as it was too easy to make contradictory assertions about subject matter.

“the essence of modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticise the discipline itself, not in order to

subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of

competence.”

“content is to be dissolved so completely into form that the work

of art or literature cannot be reduced in whole or part to anything not

itself”

“purity” of and in art — any art, including music and dance — is an illusory notion, of course. it may be

remotely conceivable or imaginable, but it can’t be realised because it

can’t be recognized any more than a “pure” human being or a “pure” (or, for that matter, gratuitous) act can

be.”

Rosenberg – “Expressionism”

- Rosenberg was greatly critical of what he saw as being this “starvation diet of formalism".

- Interested in the ‘expressionist’ part of abstract expressionism

- Rosenberg was one of the key influences in introducing existentialist theory into art – the idea of abstract expressionist works being a record of the artist’s psyche.

- The canvas was, he said “an arena in which to act”. Thus, Rosenberg prompted a complete re-thinking of the act of painting.

- Rosenberg saw abstract expressionism as being a huge shift in the very purpose of art saying “The big moment came when it was decided to paint…just to PAINT…The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation, from value-political, esthetic, moral.”

Abstract expressionist paintings were a reflection of the artist’s emotional state, it was the organisation of “emotional and intellectual energy as if he [the artist] were in a living situation”. The artist’s life was literally being put on the canvas, “A painting is an act inseparable from the biography of the artist. The painting itself is a ‘moment’”

Rosenberg did not believe as Greenberg did, that abstraction was for the purpose of ensuring the purity of the art; instead Rosenberg commented that “The apples weren’t brushed off the table to make way for perfect relations of space and colour. They had to go so that nothing would get in the way of the act of painting.”

For Rosenberg, abstraction was a result of the artist having no pre-meditated purpose and the painting being a work of pure self expression, one which “attempts to initiate a new moment in which the painter will realize his total personality – myth of future self-recognition.”

“The Value of the New”

The value of the work “must be found apart from art…The interest lies in the kind of act taking place in a four sided arena, a dramatic interest.”

What was important about the art was less based on the end product (though this was still important), but the dramatic act which created it.

- The originality of the work was vital, leading Rosenberg to coin the term “the value of the new”, as, “the only thing that counts for modern art is that a work shall be new”

“the aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to

replace it with his own history.”

“whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating

himself.”

“today, each artist must undertake to invent himself, a lifelong act of

creation that constitutes the essential content of the artist's work. the meaning of art in our time flows from this function of self-creation.”

Favourite Artist Greenberg: Pollock

Greenberg championed painter Jackson Pollock above all others. He saw his absolute abstraction as ensuring the “purity” of the art, and he wrote of his use of colour and all-over composition.

Favourite Artist Rosenberg: Willem de Kooning

Rosenberg favoured Willem de Kooning above all others, even Pollock who by this time was gaining great acclaim. De Kooning’s rough and gestural brushstrokes led Rosenberg to view him as the archetypal “action painter”

The Colour Field Artists

Barnett Newman – Onement 1 Mark Rothko – Light Red Over Black

Clement Greenberg - Focused on Formal element of artwork – colour (and form) were the total of the work

- E.g.. On Barnett Newman, said only the “colour-deaf” would look at zips – instead the colour WAS the painting

Harold Rosenberg - Focused one existentialist element – work is artist’s expression of self

- The Depiction of the Sublime

- E.g. On Barnett Newman, focused on zips, they conveyed a universal meaning

The Difference

Therefore:• Greenberg = art removed from life completely• Rosenberg = “painting has broken down every

distinction between art and life”