essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic
closely associated with American
Modern art
of the mid-20th century. In particular, he is best remembered for his promotion of the abstract expressionist
movement and was among the first published critics to praise the work of painter Jackson Pollock
.
Clement Greenberg was born in the borough of the Bronx, NYC, in 1909. His parents were middle-class Jewish immigrants, and he was the oldest of their three sons.
Complete honesty has nothing to do with "purity" or naivety. The full truth is unattainable to naivety, and the completely honest artist is not pure in heart.
One cannot condemn tendencies in art; one can only condemn works of art. To be categorically against a current art tendency or style means, in effect, to pronounce on works of art not yet created and not yet seen. It means inquiring into the motives of artists instead of into results. Yet we all know — or are supposed to know — that results are all that count in art.
The paradox in the evolution of French painting from Gustave Courbet|Courbet to Paul Cézanne|Cézanne is how it was brought to the verge of abstraction in and by its very effort to transcribe visual appearance with ever greater fidelity.