This document summarizes the differing views of Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg on Abstract Expressionism. Greenberg represented a formalist view that focused on the formal elements of a work like line, color and form. He believed art progressed towards increasing abstraction and purity of form. Rosenberg represented a non-formalist view, emphasizing the meaning and content of a work. He saw the act of painting as more important than the finished product. These divergent views influenced whether art was seen as "art about art" or "art as life" in the 1950s-60s.

1. Greenberg vs Rosenberg
Art
109A:
Contemporary
Art
Westchester
Community
College
Fall
2012

2. Greenberg vs
Rosenberg
Leading critics of postwar American
art
Divergent ways of interpreting
Abstract Expressionism
Clement Greenberg
Image source: Saatchi Gallery
Harold Rosenberg
Image source: http://nationalvanguard.org/2010/11/jews-and-modern-art/

3. Formalism
Emphasis on formal elements: line,
form, color
Work of art is valued for its form,
rather than its content
Clement Greenberg
Image source: Saatchi Gallery

4. Formalism
“[A] work of art . . . is worth
looking at primarily because it
presents a composition or
organization of color, line, light
and shade. . . since
resemblance to nature is at
best superfluous and at worst
distracting, it might as well be
eliminated.”
Alfred Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art, 1936
“Let me confess: I hold my mind
and my work free from any
association foreign to the act of Carl Mydans, Alfred Barr, 1953 Hans Hoffman in his studio, 1957
LIFE
painting”
Hans Hoffmann

5. Formalism
Abstraction is superior to realism
because the focus is on form rather
than content
“Whereas one tends to see what is in
an Old Master before seeing it as a
picture, one sees a Modernist painting
as a picture first.”
Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting”
Jackson Pollock, No. 3, 1949: Tiger, 1949
Hirshhorn Museum

6. FormalismPollock has managed to
“In these works
free line not only from its function of
representing objects in the world, but
also from its task of describing our
bounding shapes or figures, whether
abstract or representational, on the
surface of the canvas. In a painting
such as “Number One” there is only a
pictorial field so homogenous overall
and devoid both of recognizable objects
and of abstract shapes that I want to
call it ‘optical’ . . . . Pollock’s field is
optical because it addresses itself to
eyesight alone. The materiality of his
pigment is rendered sheerly visual, and
the result is a new kind of space – if it
still makes sense to call it space – in
which conditions of seeing prevail rather
than one in which objects exist, flat
shapes are juxtaposed or physical
events transpire.”
Michael Fried, “Jackson Pollock”
Jackson Pollock, No. 3, 1949: Tiger, 1949
Hirshhorn Museum

7. Non-Formalism
Emphasis on meaning/content
“Non-formalist critics tend to
focus on issues like the artist's
personal beliefs and/or the
context in which a work was
produced. If there is one
unifying belief among 20th-
century non-formalist art
critics, it is that art is an
organic process in which the
artist's emotional state is laid
bare by the final product.”
Theartstory.org
Harold Rosenberg
Image source: http://nationalvanguard.org/2010/11/jews-and-modern-art/

8. Rosenberg
Emphasis on painting as “act”
“The act of painting is
inseparable from the
biography of the artist”
Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action
Painters”
Hans Namuth, Pollock in his studio, 1950

9. Rosenberg
“What was to go on the canvas was
not a picture but an event.”
Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters”
“In this gesturing with materials the
esthetic, too, has been
subordinated . . . . What matters
always is the revelation contained in
the act.”
Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters”
Hans Namuth, Pollock in his studio, 1950

10. Rosenberg
Rosenberg considered the formal
elements to be irrelevant:
“The critic who goes on judging in
terms of schools, styles, form, as if
the painter were still concerned with
producing a certain kind of object (the
work of art), instead of living on the
canvas, is bound to seem a stranger.”
Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters”
Harold Rosenberg
Image source: http://nationalvanguard.org/2010/11/jews-and-modern-art/

11. Rosenberg
“Form, color, composition, drawing,
are auxiliaries, any one of which—or
practically all, as has been attempted,
logically, with unpainted canvases—
can be dispensed with. What matters
always is the revelation contained in
the act.”
Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters”
Harold Rosenberg
Image source: http://nationalvanguard.org/2010/11/jews-and-modern-art/

12. Test Your
Understanding
Formalist or Non-Formalist
“Painting isn’t just the visual thing
that reaches your retina – it’s
what is behind and in it. I’m not
interested in ‘abstracting’ or
taking things our or reducing
painting to design, form, line, and
color. I paint this way because I
can keep putting more things in it
– drama, anger, pain, love, a
figure, a horse, my ideas about
space.”
Willem de Kooning

13. Test Your
Understanding
Formalist or Non-Formalist
“You might as well get one thing
straight . . . I am not an
abstractionist . . . not interested
in relationships of color or form or
anything else . . . I’m interested
only in expressing basic human
emotions – tragedy, ecstasy,
doom, and so on”
Mark Rothko

14. Test Your
Understanding
Formalist or Non-Formalist
“One of [Ellsworth] Kelly’s
preoccupations has been to
explore the tension in our
perceptions of volume and plane,
foreground and background. He
uses perceptual ambiguities and
optical effects to force us to
acknowledge their simultaneous
presence and recognize the play
between them.”

15. Test Your
Understanding
Formalist or Non-Formalist
“The chaos in Pollock’s painting
seems to well up from deep
within his psyche, as a kind of
upsurge of primal energies,
which provides the work with its
authenticity. Chaos, however, not
only was the result of Pollock’s
individual psychology but was
informed by the turbulent state of
the world, which, like his
adventitious process, seemed
unmanageable and beyond
rational control.”
Irving Sandler

16. Greenberg vs
Rosenberg
Divergent views on art
• Formalist
• Non-formalist
Exhibition Catalog, Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art,
1940-1976, The Jewish Museum, 2008

17. Art as Life
Greenberg vs
Rosenberg Art as Art
These divergent views influenced
the distinct paths taken by art in the
1950s/1960s
• Art as art
• Art as life

18. Modernist Theory
Clement Greenberg’s ideas were
developed in a series of essays
written during the 1940s-1950s
They were collected together in Art
and Culture, published in 1961

19. Modernist Theory
Greenberg’s key ideas included:
1. Artistic “progress”
2. Art as a self-critical activity
3. Medium specificity
4. Autonomy and self-referentiality
(art about art)
5. Purity
6. The distinction between Avant
garde and Kitsch
Clement Greenberg looking at a painting by Ken Noland
Image source:
https://www.artnet.sk/Magazine/features/kostabi/kostabi9-11-18.asp

20. Modernist theory
Greenberg believed that art evolves
progressively, and that each new
advance renders previous
discoveries obsolete
“Formalism decreed a narrowly
linear progress in modernism
toward a relentless
purification . . . . Subject matter
was irrelevant, illusion
forbidden . . . .”
Fineberg, p. 155
Jacket cover for the exhibition catalog for Alfred Barr’s
Cubism and Abstract Art, Museum of Modern Art, 1936

21. Modernist Theory
He believed that the inevitable path
of modern painting since the 19th
century was towards abstraction
Henri Matisse, Large Reclining Nude /
The Pink Nude1935
Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1865

22. Modernist Theory
The engine driving artistic evolution
is self criticism
“I identify Modernism with the intensification, almost
exacerbation, of this self-critical tendency that
began with the philosopher Kant”
Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting
“The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the
use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to
criticize the discipline itself.”
Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting
Jeff McMillan
http://www.jdmcmillan.org/works/self-criticism-and-want-it/

23. Modernist Theory
For Greenberg, art is like
philosophy
It is a self reflexive activity in which
art is used to investigate the nature
of art
Nina Katchadourian, Special Collections, from the Sorted Books
Project, 1996

24. Modernist Theory
Medium specificity: Greenberg
believed that each of the arts
should focus on what is “unique
and irreducible” to the medium
“The task of self criticism became to eliminate from
the effects of each art any and every effect that
might conceivably be borrowed from or by the
medium of any other art. Thereby each art would be
rendered ‘pure,’ and in its ‘purity’ find the guarantee
of its standards of quality as well as its
independence.”
Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting

25. Modernist Theory
Paintings should not tell stories
because that is the domain of
literature and theater
Rick Foucheux, Tim Getman, Nancy Robinette, and Jeremy S.
Holm in Death of a Salesman. Photos by Scott Suchman/courtesy
Arena Stage.

26. Modernist Theory
Nor should painting try to suggest
three dimensionality, since that is
the domain of sculpture
David Smith, Cubi XVII, 1963
Dallas Museum of Art

27. Modernist Theory
Greenberg believed that realistic art
is an “illusion”
“Realistic, illusionist art had
dissembled the medium, using art
to conceal art.”
Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting
Rene Magritte, Promenades of Euclid, 1955

28. Modernist Theory
In realist painting, the picture
pretends to be a window when in
reality it is a flat piece of canvas
covered with paint

29. Modernist Theory
Greenberg believed that for art to
be “advanced,” it had to focus on
what was specific and unique to the
medium itself
Clement Greenberg looking at a painting by Ken Noland
Image source:
https://www.artnet.sk/Magazine/features/kostabi/kostabi9-11-18.asp

30. Modernist Theory
A canvas is a flat surface, and the
material of painting is paint

31. Modernist Theory
In an abstract picture, we are made
aware of the picture as paint on
canvas
“Whereas one tends to see what is in an Old
Master before seeing it as a picture, one
sees a Modernist painting as a picture first.”
Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting
Jackson Pollock, No. 3, 1949: Tiger, 1949
Hirshhorn Museum

32. Modernist Theory
It is therefore “self referential” and
“autonomous”
“Modernism used art to call attention to art.
The limitations that constitute the medium of
painting -- the flat surface, the shape of the
support, the properties of pigment -- were
treated by the Old Masters as negative
factors [i.e. things that had to be overcome
to create a seamless illusion] . . . Modernist
painting has come to regard these same
limitations as positive factors that are to be
acknowledged openly.”
Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting
Barnett Newman, Onement I, 1948
MOMA

33. Modernist Theory
Greenberg believed that through
this self-critical activity, art
becomes more pure
“Thereby each art would be
rendered ‘pure’, and in its ‘purity’
find the guarantee of its standards
of quality as well as of its
independence.”
Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting
Jeff McMillan
http://www.jdmcmillan.org/works/self-criticism-and-want-it/

34. Modernist Theory
This is what separates “art” from
“kitsch” -- the vulgar products of
mass culture
“To fill the demand of the new
market, a new commodity was
devised: ersatz culture, kitsch,
destined for those who,
insensible to the values of
genuine culture, are hungry
nevertheless for the diversion
that only culture of some sort
can provide.”
Clement Greenberg, Avant Garde
and Kitsch

35. Post Painterly
Abstraction
Clement Greenberg had been an
early champion of Jackson Pollock
and the Abstract Expressionists
Hans Namuth, Clement Greenberg, 1951

36. Post Painterly
Abstraction
In his 1955 essay “American Type
Painting” he praised Pollock’s “all
over” style as the latest step in the
evolution of Modernism
Jackson Pollock, Shimmering Substance, 1946
Museum of Modern Art

37. Post Painterly
Abstraction
The “all over” style destroyed the
last remnants of illusionism in
painting
Jackson Pollock, No. 3, 1949: Tiger, 1949
Hirshhorn Museum

38. Post Painterly
Abstraction
But Greenberg grew impatient with
Pollock’s “Gothic” personality and
intensely emotional style
Clement Greenberg
Image source: Saatchi Gallery

39. Post Painterly
Abstraction
His pictures were not “pure” enough
since they inevitably pointed to the
process of painting and the
emotional state of the artist
Jackson Pollock, Number 1A, 1948
Museum of Modern Art

40. Post Painterly
Abstraction
Greenberg also denounced De
Kooning’s Women
In addition to wallowing in the
vulgarity of “kitsch,” the pictures
were not “self referential” or “pure”
Willem De Kooning Woman I, 1950-52
Museum of Modern Art

41. Post Painterly
Abstraction
In the late 1950’s Greenberg shifted
allegiance to a new style of painting
he called “post painterly
abstraction”
Clement Greenberg looking at a painting by Ken Noland
Image source:
https://www.artnet.sk/Magazine/features/kostabi/kostabi9-11-18.asp