Professional Documents
Culture Documents
- Harriet Farquhar
- Michael J Lewis commented that Greenbergs nod of approval became popular opinion - A few laconic paragraphs might launch a career or cripple it. Where his favour came to restthere 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 artists 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
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
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.
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 cant be realised because it cant 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 artists 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 paintjust to PAINTThe gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation, from value-political, esthetic, moral.
Abstract expressionist paintings were a reflection of the artists emotional state, it was the organisation of emotional and intellectual energy as if he [the artist] were in a living situation. The artists 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 werent 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 selfrecognition.
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.
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.
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 artists expression of self - The Depiction of the Sublime
The Difference
Therefore: Greenberg = art removed from life completely Rosenberg = painting has broken down every distinction between art and life