BiblioVault - Books about Greenberg, Clement

Clement Greenberg Between the Lines

Including a Debate with Clement Greenberg

Thierry de Duve

University of Chicago Press, 2010

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994), champion of abstract expressionism and modernism—of Pollock, Miró, and Matisse—has been esteemed by many as the greatest art critic of the second half of the twentieth century, and possibly the greatest art critic of all time. This volume, a lively reassessment of Greenberg’s writings, features three approaches to the man and his work: Greenberg as critic, doctrinaire, and theorist. The book also features a transcription of a public debate with Greenberg that de Duve organized at the University of Ottawa in 1988. Clement Greenberg Between the Lines will be an indispensable resource for students, scholars, and enthusiasts of modern art.

“In this compelling study, Thierry de Duve reads Greenberg against the grain of the famous critic’s critics—and sometimes against the grain of the critic himself. By reinterpreting Greenberg’s interpretations of Pollock, Duchamp, and other canonical figures, de Duve establishes new theoretical coordinates by which to understand the uneasy complexities and importance of Greenberg’s practice.” John O’Brian, editor of Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticisms

“De Duve is an expert on theoretical aesthetics and thus well suited to reassess the formalist tenets of the late American art critic's theory on art and culture. . . . De Duve's close readings of Greenberg . . . contain much of interest, and the author clearly enjoys matching wits with ‘the world's best known art critic.’” Library Journal

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Clement Greenberg, Late Writings

Clement Greenberg

University of Minnesota Press, 2007

Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) was a colossus of twentieth-century American art, achieving a degree of authority almost unimaginable for a critic today. For more than thirty years he was both lionized as a proponent of formalism and criticized for his perceived dogmatism. In the postwar period Greenberg used his position of influence to advocate the importance of abstract expressionism and color-field painting and to establish the careers of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Hans Hofmann, Barnett Newman, and Willem de Kooning. With the coming of pop art, performance and conceptual art, and postmodernism, however, Greenberg found his position increasingly challenged.

Edited with an introduction by critic Robert C. Morgan, Clement Greenberg, Late Writings is the first collection from the period 1970 to 1990, and the only comprehensive resource for Greenberg’s thought during the last third of his life. While earlier works have covered Greenberg’s early and middle career, this volume spans his mature period, during which he reevaluates and refines many of his earlier tenets in some of his most carefully crafted and engaging work. Exploring a surprising breadth of issues and mediums and demonstrating a depth of aesthetic and philosophical insights, in these relatively unknown works Greenberg incites a new direction for modernism beyond the twentieth century.

This essential volume includes five interviews from the end of his life in which Greenberg revisits some of the concerns of his formative years, illuminating the progression of his thought. Late Writings is an integral resource as issues of quality and significance in the dynamic world of art continue to be redefined.

Clement Greenberg was the most influential art critic of the postwar period. He was the author of numerous books, and his essays appeared in art magazines as well as such publications as Partisan Review, Commentary, and The Nation.

Robert C. Morgan is the author of The End of the Art World and of a monograph on the optical painter Vasarely. In addition to his work as a critic, artist, art historian, and curator, he is visiting professor of art at Hunter College in New York City.

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The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 1

Perceptions and Judgments, 1939-1944

Clement Greenberg

University of Chicago Press, 1988

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994), champion of abstract expressionism and modernism—of Pollock, Miró, and Matisse—has been esteemed by many as the greatest art critic of the second half of the twentieth century, and possibly the greatest art critic of all time. On radio and in print, Greenberg was the voice of "the new American painting," and a central figure in the postwar cultural history of the United States.

Greenberg first established his reputation writing for the Partisan Review, which he joined as an editor in 1940. He became art critic for the Nation in 1942, and was associate editor of Commentary from 1945 until 1957. His seminal essay, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" set the terms for the ongoing debate about the relationship of modern high art to popular culture. Though many of his ideas have been challenged, Greenberg has influenced generations of critics, historians, and artists, and he remains influential to this day.

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The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 2

Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949

Clement Greenberg

University of Chicago Press, 1988

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994), champion of abstract expressionism and modernism—of Pollock, Miró, and Matisse—has been esteemed by many as the greatest art critic of the second half of the twentieth century, and possibly the greatest art critic of all time. On radio and in print, Greenberg was the voice of "the new American painting," and a central figure in the postwar cultural history of the United States.

Greenberg first established his reputation writing for the Partisan Review, which he joined as an editor in 1940. He became art critic for the Nation in 1942, and was associate editor of Commentary from 1945 until 1957. His seminal essay, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" set the terms for the ongoing debate about the relationship of modern high art to popular culture. Though many of his ideas have been challenged, Greenberg has influenced generations of critics, historians, and artists, and he remains influential to this day.

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The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 3

Affirmations and Refusals, 1950-1956

Clement Greenberg

University of Chicago Press, 1995

Clement Greenberg is widely recognized as the most influential and articulate champion of modernism during its American ascendency after World War II, the period largely covered by these highly acclaimed volumes of The Collected Essays and Criticism. Volume 3: Affirmations and Refusals presents Greenberg's writings from the period between 1950 and 1956, while Volume 4: Modernism with a Vengeance gathers essays and criticism of the years 1957 to 1969. The 120 works range from little-known pieces originally appearing Vogue and Harper's Bazaar to such celebrated essays as "The Plight of Our Culture" (1953), "Modernist Painting" (1960), and "Post Painterly Abstraction" (1964). Preserved in their original form, these writings allow readers to witness the development and direction of Greenberg's criticism, from his advocacy of abstract expressionism to his enthusiasm for color-field painting.

With the inclusion of critical exchanges between Greenberg and F. R. Leavis, Fairfield Porter, Thomas B. Hess, Herbert Read, Max Kozloff, and Robert Goldwater, these volumes are essential sources in the ongoing debate over modern art. For each volume, John O'Brian has furnished an introduction, a selected bibliography, and a brief summary of events that places the criticism in its artistic and historical context.

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The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 4

Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969

Clement Greenberg

University of Chicago Press, 1995

Clement Greenberg is widely recognized as the most influential and articulate champion of modernism during its American ascendency after World War II, the period largely covered by these highly acclaimed volumes of The Collected Essays and Criticism. Volume 3: Affirmations and Refusals presents Greenberg's writings from the period between 1950 and 1956, while Volume 4: Modernism with a Vengeance gathers essays and criticism of the years 1957 to 1969. The 120 works range from little-known pieces originally appearing Vogue and Harper's Bazaar to such celebrated essays as "The Plight of Our Culture" (1953), "Modernist Painting" (1960), and "Post Painterly Abstraction" (1964). Preserved in their original form, these writings allow readers to witness the development and direction of Greenberg's criticism, from his advocacy of abstract expressionism to his enthusiasm for color-field painting.

With the inclusion of critical exchanges between Greenberg and F. R. Leavis, Fairfield Porter, Thomas B. Hess, Herbert Read, Max Kozloff, and Robert Goldwater, these volumes are essential sources in the ongoing debate over modern art. For each volume, John O'Brian has furnished an introduction, a selected bibliography, and a brief summary of events that places the criticism in its artistic and historical context.

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Eyesight Alone

Clement Greenberg's Modernism and the Bureaucratization of the Senses

Caroline A. Jones

University of Chicago Press, 2006

Even a decade after his death, Clement Greenberg remains controversial. One of the most influential art writers of the twentieth century, Greenberg propelled Abstract Expressionist painting-in particular the monumental work of Jackson Pollock-to a leading position in an international postwar art world. On radio and in print, Greenberg was the voice of "the new American painting," and a central figure in the postwar cultural history of the United States.

Caroline Jones's magisterial study widens Greenberg's fundamental tenet of "opticality"-the idea that modernist art is apprehended through "eyesight alone"-to a broader arena, examining how the critic's emphasis on the specular resonated with a society increasingly invested in positivist approaches to the world. Greenberg's modernist discourse, Jones argues, developed in relation to the rationalized procedures that gained wide currency in the United States at midcentury, in fields ranging from the sense-data protocols theorized by scientific philosophy to the development of cultural forms, such as hi-fi, that targeted specific senses, one by one. Greenberg's attempt to isolate and celebrate the visual was one manifestation of a large-scale segmentation-or bureaucratization-of the body's senses. Working through these historical developments, Jones brings Greenberg's theories into contemporary philosophical debates about agency and subjectivity.

Eyesight Alone offers artists, art historians, philosophers, and all those interested in the arts a critical history of this generative figure, bringing his work fully into dialogue with the ideas that shape contemporary critical discourse and shedding light not only on Clement Greenberg but also on the contested history of modernism itself.

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