Text/Shen (Professor and Doctoral Supervisor of Zhejiang University)

It is said that he is the main spokesman of American "abstract expressionism", and it is he who makes the reputation of American native or immigrant painters such as Pollock and Roscoe onto the world stage. Because his main viewpoint represents the codification of modernist art theory, he has become a watershed between modernism and postmodernism. Almost all people who sympathized with or supported modernism defended him. At the same time, almost all post-modernists pointed their criticism at him first. He is the author of Art and Culture, Simple Aesthetics and Collected Works of Greenberg's Art Criticism (Volume 1-4).

They moved to Norfolk, Virginia. Six years later, the Greenbergs returned to new york and settled in Brooklyn this time. His father became a manufacturer.

Greenberg graduated from a public middle school, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Sarakus on 1930. Unable to find a job after graduation, he taught himself German, Italian, French and Latin. Starting from 1933, he started to do textile wholesale business with his father, but Clemente resigned on 1935. In the following year, Greenberg began to work for the federal government, initially in the Civil Service Commission. 1937, he was transferred to the Inspector Section of the General Administration of Customs of new york Port. The latter position gave him leisure to become a prose writer. 1939, Greenberg published his first review article, which was a review of the German playwright Brecht's play A penny for the poor. From then on, he began his career of literary criticism for 50 years.

1944 accepted the post of executive editor of Contemporary Jewish Records. When this magazine was acquired by Review magazine, Gerhard was appointed as assistant editor, and he worked in this position until 1957.

Until 194 1, Greenberg's criticism was mainly confined to literature. In May of the same year, he published an article about paul klee in National magazine and began to dabble in art criticism. However, his artistic concept and methodology have matured as early as two theoretical articles. They are Avant-garde and Vulgarity (1939) and laocoon Towards Renewal (1940) published in the Party's comments a few years ago.

In the article Avant-garde and Vulgarity, Greenberg claimed that avant-garde or modernist art is a means to reject capitalist culture and industrial products. He used Kitsch to describe this vulgar art of consumerism (according to the German word kitsch, which originally meant "garbage", it was later used to describe those sentimental and tearful works of art, so it was also translated as kitsch or kitsch art). However, in Chinese, the word "kitsch" appears more in the name of Czech writer Kundera, which is endowed with too many philosophical and political meanings, so I directly translate Greenberg's kitsch into "kitsch" or "kitsch art". Avant-garde art, like modern philosophy, explores the conditions for us to experience and understand the world. It not only provides information about the world, just like those methods that accurately describe the surface phenomena of the world.

Avant-garde and vulgarism, to a certain extent, were responses to the destruction and suppression of modernist art by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They only replaced it with "Aryan art" or "socialist realism", so they had the distinct political motives of the liberal left at that time. However, it is not surprising that Greenberg's political concerns are the same as those of progressive intellectuals around the world who were more or less inclined to the left at that time. At the same time, this political concern of modern intellectuals cannot be interpreted as a more mechanical argument that art should directly serve politics. Nothing is more ridiculous than this metaphor! Since Baudelaire, outstanding modernists have adhered to a certain party position. However, almost no one will think that art under direct political command is good art, which is the proposition of tension between political care and artistic autonomy, and it is so important in understanding all the narratives and theories of modernism (for a discussion on the tension between modernism's partisanship and independent art and realistic care, see my book What is modernism? Art Criticism in the 20th Century, China Academy of Fine Arts Press, 2003, pp. 3-5/kloc-0). Therefore, nothing is further from the truth than Greenberg's naive idea that his party position determines that he is a national policy scholar! Because the starting point and final destination of Greenberg's critical career lies in adhering to the tension between artists' social concern and aesthetic autonomy.

To be exact, Greenberg's view of art is the dialectics of Marxist politics and Bauhaus aesthetics. Greenberg traced the origin of vulgar art to the social differentiation brought by the industrial revolution, the rise of cultural popularization and the birth of cheap art market. He not only classified the official art of Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union, but also classified the mass cultural and artistic products of American capitalism as vulgar art.

In Greenberg's view, the rejection of vulgar art, in turn, requires a firm defense of elegant art. However, he has a special model of elegant art in his heart. Greenberg wrote this article during a rather chaotic art period in America. At that time, there were four major art movements in the United States: "America-Scene Movement", social realists, and American abstract artists influenced by cubism and surrealism. They never took root in the United States, but due to the large number of surrealist artists in Europe,

Greenberg is not interested in the first two; For him, they are basically vulgar art that serves politics. He also despises surrealism, which is regarded as a retrogression of the fictional concept of painting (a window to imagine the world). In the1940s, it is not clear whether the main channel of modernist painting will move towards surrealism or abstraction. Greenberg's persistent and sometimes aggressive argument played a key role in deviating from the former and moving towards the latter.

Avant-garde and vulgarity represent Greenberg's early views on avant-garde art, and later he rarely used the word "avant-garde". On the contrary, with the maturity of his art criticism theory, he used "advanced art" and "main art" more and more. Moreover, in his later ideological development, the sharp opposition between "pioneer and vulgarity" began to loosen. Greenberg later believed that the threat to avant-garde art was not vulgar art, but "the doctrine of the mean". In fact, in the article Avantgarde and Vulgarity, people can already read the potential of this change. Because in Greenberg's analysis of the social background of the birth of vulgar art, there has been a hidden understanding that modern vulgar art is only the continuation of folk art in traditional society. Just as any traditional society has folk culture and folk art, in a modern urban society, vulgar art has its rationality. Therefore, in the mature Greenberg's view, the challenge to avant-garde art no longer comes from vulgar art, but from moderate art. What is moderate art? It is a pseudo-avant-garde art, an avant-garde art with no interest or low interest. In his mind, the typical golden mean art is pop art.

Therefore, in Greenberg's view, "avant-garde" refers to an attitude, that is, an avant-garde attitude, an attitude against established artistic language and academic schools. This understanding also forms the basis of a general understanding of avant-garde art in Britain and America. This makes Greenberg's avant-garde art theory very different from that of German aesthetician Peter Biegel. [See Biegel's Avant-garde Theory, translated by Gao Jianping, Commercial Press, 2002; Shen's Introduction to Classical Literature and Art (Beijing Normal University Press, 20 10 edition). ]

Greenberg's early thoughts were deeply influenced by Marx and hans hofmann. Grignard's research on Marxist theory made him interested in avant-garde art, because avant-garde art implied that abstraction was a revolutionary form, which was far from the public interest in American narrative painting. But for Greenberg, the more important influence came from German artist and art educator hans hofmann. From 1938 to 39 years old, Greenberg went to Hoffman's night school. There, Hoffman emphasized the formal quality of painting-the "push-pull relationship" of colors, lines, planes and various shapes on the plane canvas. In the criticism in the 1940s and 1950s, Grignard developed these viewpoints and forged them into a unique critical tool.

In the mid-1940s, Greenberg was the first person to support abstract artists of new york School, such as Jackson Pollock, willem de kooning, robert motherwell and david smith. At that time, don't say that the American people didn't realize the significance of these avant-garde artists. Even most American critics didn't think these new york artists were important. Only a few critics support these artists, and Greenberg is the most determined one. Please pay attention to this historical moment. Did the Cold War begin when Greenberg supported American abstract expressionist artists?

1950 12, Greenberg joined the American Commission on Cultural Freedom under the CIA, which is a branch of the Paris-based World Commission on Cultural Freedom. This historical fact has become the main source of later generations' attacks on the false statement that he is the official politician of American foreign policy. However, so far, there is no evidence that Greenberg's critical writing was directly ordered by the Committee or indirectly ordered by the CIA, and there is no evidence that MoMA, the most influential art institution in the United States at that time, participated in the Cold War of the US government. So, what should be the explanation for Greenberg's joining the American Council for Cultural Freedom? O 'Brien, editor of Greenberg's four volumes (he is neither an admirer nor a detractor of Greenberg himself, but a more objective and neutral scholar), believes that this move can only be interpreted as a symbol of the general political turn of left-wing intellectuals in new york. These leftist intellectuals (who used to be fanatical Marxists) who were generally disappointed with * * * productism (Stalin's socialist model appeared in reality) can only show their defense of freedom through this symbolic "taking sides" behavior.

Ever since Serge Guilbaut, a Canadian who wrote in French, published the article "How new york Stole the Idea of Modern Art", American abstract expressionist artists have suffered from the hunger of "cold war fighters", just like the avant-garde artists who were once neglected, they have once again become street rats shouted by everyone. However, even Mr. Gulbert, who has a strong chauvinism in French culture, can point out at the beginning of the book: "My original intention is not to say that the artists of this avant-garde movement have clear political motives, nor to imply that their actions are the product of some kind of conspiracy." (Serge Guilbaut, "How new york Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom and the Cold War", Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1983, p. 3) Ironically, future generations will not feel addicted unless they tamper with the initiator's point of view as a conspiracy theory.

At the end of last century, Frances Si Tong Saunders, the author who presided over the large-scale investigation of "CIA and Cultural Cold War", interviewed Waldo Rasmussen (1954 to 19 1), then assistant curator of new york Museum of Modern Art, and Rasmussen told the author:

There are a series of articles about the relationship between the international exhibition plan and cultural propaganda of the Museum of Modern Art; Some even suggested that the plan was related to the CIA. As I happened to work there in those years, I can say that this is completely false. The focus of the international plan is art-it has nothing to do with politics or propaganda. In fact, for an American museum, it is extremely important to avoid the hints of cultural propaganda; It is for this reason that it is not always beneficial to contact the American embassy or American government officials, because it would imply that these exhibitions are for publicity, but in fact they are not. Francis Si Tong Saunders, who pays the piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, London, Granta Books, 1999, p. 268).

Finally, even Miss Sanders, the author who tried to expose the story, had to admit: "There is no preliminary evidence to prove that there is a formal agreement between the CIA and the Museum of Modern Art" (ibid., p. 264). "There is no preliminary evidence of any formal agreement between the CIA and the Museum of Modern Art". However, the "haters" all over the world (to borrow [harold bloom's words]) will not stop there. Miss Sanders said brazenly, "Actually, it's not necessary at all." But as American scholar alvin toffler Sandler pointed out, it is necessary to provide evidence for American abstract expressionism and Greenberg's detractors all over the world. Another recent large-scale survey to refute the argument that the CIA promoted American abstract expressionism was conducted by [David Court]. See his "Dancer's Defeat: The Controversy of Cultural Hegemony during the Cold War", Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003. )

So, how does Greenberg himself respond to the statement that abstract expressionism is a weapon of the Cold War? He said:

There's a lot of this bullshit-saying that the State Council supports American art, which is part of the Cold War, and so on. It was after the success of American art at home and abroad, mainly in Paris, that the State Council said that we can export this kind of thing now. Before that, they didn't dare to do so at all. The battle has been won. (Robert Bosto, "On Art and Politics: A Recent Interview with clement greenberg", freese, September-10/994, p. 33. )

Therefore, like other famous new york intellectuals in the 1950s, Greenberg had clear political concerns. However, an intellectual's political concern should not be confused with his political actions, and his remarks should not be completely obliterated because of his political inaccuracy. In the simple polar opposition between "free world" and "totalitarianism"-the so-called cold war mentality, is it right to do the opposite? ) China has a good tradition of doing research, which is called "Don't waste words because of people". However, in reality, people often cancel their speeches by revealing someone's political motives (especially when such political motives are different from their own political positions).

In 1950s, when new york School of Painting was recognized, Greenberg's critical quality made him famous. He was invited to hold exhibitions and lectures at Montenegro College, Yale University, Bennington College and Princeton University. Greenberg continued to deepen his thoughts and write art reviews. He used concise language to combine the reference of modern art history with his analysis of the characteristics of painting form, so that the abstract works of the above artists can be easily understood by art critics and art students. The greatest feature of his artistic criticism is his complete personalization and passionate exposition of his artistic enthusiasm. 196 1 year, he published a collection of critical essays, Art and Culture, which had a great influence on the next generation of critics.

In the early 1960s, Greenberg also published one of his most influential papers, Modernist Painting. This paper summarizes a formalism theory. Among them, the painter's overwhelming concern for the formal elements of painting (especially the flatness of the picture) has become a common thread in his understanding of modern art history. From Edouard Manet to the contemporary new york School of Painting in the 1940s and 1950s, Greenberg kept stripping off the theme materials, illusions and painting space along a clue. Because of the inherent logic of its media, the painter refused to narrate and replaced it with the unique formal quality of painting. Among them, his definition of modernism is considered to be one of the clearest arguments about modernism theory so far:

The essence of modernism lies in criticizing the discipline itself in a unique way, not subverting it, but laying a solid foundation for its ability. Kant uses logic to determine the boundaries of logic. Although he withdrew a lot from the old jurisdiction of logic, its foundation is more solid within the scope of logic. (C. Greenberg, "Modernist Painting", in C. Harrison & ampp. Wood (Editor. ), Art in Theory1900 ——1990: Selected Works of Changing Ideas, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Co., Ltd., 1992. Page 755. )

In Greenberg's view, the essence of this self-criticism of modernism originates from but is different from the criticism of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment initiated the criticism of human affairs with the powerful ideological weapon of human reason. All human activities are required to be based on rationality. Similarly, art must also achieve this self-proof:

Every art should carry out this kind of self-proof. What needs to be displayed is not only the unique and irreversible things in general art, but also the unique and irreversible things in each special art. Each art must determine its own effect through its own practice and works. It is true that by doing so, every art will narrow its own scope of ability, but at the same time, it will also make things that remain within this scope more reliable. (same as above)

Greenberg's uniqueness lies not only in tracing modernism in the general sense (mainly a way of thinking) back to the principle of self-criticism in the Enlightenment, but also in linking modernist art in the special sense with the media characteristics of each specific art:

The unique and appropriate scope of each art is consistent with all the unique things in its media nature. The task of self-criticism becomes to exclude from the special effects of each art any effects that may be borrowed from other art media or obtained through other art media. Therefore, every art will become "pure", and in its "purity", we will find its quality standard and its independence guarantee. "Purity" is self-definition, and the reason of self-criticism in art becomes a strong self-definition reason. (same as above)

Linked to the unique artistic category of painting, Greenberg further pointed out that the uniqueness of its media lies in its limitations:

Realism and naturalism cover up the media of art and cover up art with art; Modernism reminds art with art, and the limitations of painting media-plane, the shape of matrix and the nature of pigment-are regarded as some negative factors by the old masters, which can only be acknowledged implicitly or indirectly. In modernist works, these same limitations are regarded as positive factors and publicly recognized. Manet's paintings became the first batch of modernist works because they boldly and frankly announced the flattening of the picture. Inspired by MANET, impressionist painters gave up the background color and translucent color of their paintings, exposing the naked fact to the audience: the colors they used were composed of pigments squeezed out of paint tubes or boxes. On the other hand, Cezanne gave up fidelity or correctness in order to make his sketch or composition more clearly conform to the rectangular shape of canvas. (ibid., pp. 755-756)

Among all these limiting factors, the biggest feature of painting is its "flatness". Therefore, in Greenberg's view, a history of modernist painting is a continuous and flat history:

However, for modernist painting art criticism and defining its own methods, the inevitable flattening pressure on the painting surface is more fundamental than anything else. Because only flatness is the unique and exclusive feature of painting art, the closed form of painting is a limited condition or norm, which is shared with stage art; Color is a norm or means, not only in drama, but also in sculpture. Because flatness is the only condition that painting and any other art have never enjoyed, modernist painting develops towards flatness rather than any other direction. (ibid., p. 756)

These constitute the main arguments of modernist painting. With the rise of pop art in 1960s, Greenberg's formalism method no longer works. Pop art is based on naked conceptual wisdom (rather than the artist's feeling or inspiration) and originated from "low-level art", which has become the opposite of Greenberg's formalism theory. As a response to pop art, Greenberg held an exhibition "Post-painting Abstraction" in 1964. In the introduction of the exhibition catalogue, he expanded his theoretical principles, and thought that the paintings that show openness, clear and bright outline lines and even monochrome are the natural evolution of the history of art forms outlined in his article Modernist Painting.

Greenberg coined the term "post-painterly abstraction" to distinguish abstract expressionism from painterly abstraction (Press: Greenberg's "post-painterly abstraction" comes from Maleisch [Wolflin's. Walter used it to refer to the painting characteristics opposite to "line drawing" and to define Baroque art different from classical art ... So in Wolfowitz's view, classical painting in the heyday of Renaissance was line drawing, while Baroque painting was painting. See Clement Greenberg, "Post-painting Abstraction", Clement Greenberg, Collected Works and Criticism, Volume 4, edited. John O 'Brien, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1993; See Wolfling: Artistic Stylistics, translated by Pan, Renmin University of China Press, 2004. The term "post-painting abstraction" is used by a large number of abstract artists, who oppose the abstract trend of the first generation of abstract expressionism that emphasizes brushwork. The dominant trend of post-painting abstraction is called sharp-edged painters, such as ellsworth kelly and Frank Stella. They explore the relationship between highly regular shapes and screen boundaries, and the relationship between the shapes depicted on the canvas surface and the real shapes of the canvas base. The word is also used to refer to painters in the field of color, such as helen frankenthaler and morris louis. They directly use rare pigments to explore the texture and visual effect of large-area solid color blocks on unpainted canvas. However, the boundaries between these movements are blurred, and some artists, such as Kenneth Norland, share many characteristics with these two movements. Post-painting abstraction is usually regarded as the continuation of modernism's self-critical dialectics (however, it also inspires different opinions, especially michael fred's criticism of reductionism in Shen's translation of Greenberg's Modernist Painting and Shen's Art Theory and Criticism after Greenberg, both of which are published in Journal of Zhejiang University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition), No.2, 20 10).

Greenberg's personal taste led him to reject the pop art in 1960s, because it was a trend obviously influenced by vulgar culture. After pop art, Greenberg's influence began to decline. However, throughout the 1960s, Greenberg still exerted a great influence on the younger generation of critics, such as Michael Fried and rosalind Klaus. After the 1970s, Greenberg basically withdrew from the circle of art criticism, and instead summarized the philosophical basis of his career of art criticism, that is, his aesthetic view. His speeches and writings in his later years made him one of the most important aestheticians at the end of the 20th century.

Even for his challenger, Greenberg was still the most important critic of his time. Everyone agrees that he clearly and concisely expounded a way of looking at art, which has been popular for half a century. Greenberg's influence is so great that for contemporary critics, his exposition finally defines the whole modernist art movement. In the book The Painted World written by Tom Wolfe 1975, he called Greenberg the king of "the three mountains of culture". The so-called "three mountains of culture (three Bergs)" refers to three critics who have the greatest influence on the American art world: clement greenberg, Harold Rosenberg and Leo Steinberg.

In the 1980s and 1990s when post-modernism prevailed, Greenberg was vilified by many people. However, after entering the 20th century, people became more and more aware of the importance of Greenberg. American scholar michael lewis is neither an admirer nor a detractor of Greenberg. In this article, for the sake of balance, I seldom quote Greenberg's admirers. ) I once described Greenberg's portrait from the perspective of "Klebold": "He is a person who promotes American art and makes it a tool of American foreign policy, knowingly cooperates with the so-called CIA-sponsored touring exhibition of American paintings in Europe, and he is also a person who puts McCarthyism into his own aesthetic judgment, which is intolerable. (Michael J. Lewis, Art, Politics and Art); Clement greenberg ",commentary, June 1998).

However, as Lewis said, the real reason for Greenberg's enduring is based on the fact that today's art world is still plagued by his thoughts and commandments. The current wisdom is that art should have a clear and direct political use; The difference between vulgar art and elegant art is meaningless; Theme content and narrative content are more important than skill or form. As for the idea that each art style is developed, comprehensive and logical, it was abandoned and turned into a carnival that welcomed local, temporary, personal and arbitrary things. "But," Lewis further pointed out,

The result is not the improvement of early cultural vitality, but the obvious catastrophic decline. Therefore, if students in American art colleges are still applying Greenberg's theory-they are-it is because there is no place to stand in the turbulent and sinister sea, and it is always gratifying to have a landmark, even if it is a hateful thing in theory. As a foil, even as a secret ideal, some things that Greenberg supports-seriousness, high ideological integrity and dedication to formal perfection-may still accompany us for some time, if we are lucky enough. (same as above)

Bibliography:

1. clement greenberg, Art and Culture: A Critical Paper, Boston: Beacon Press,1961; Art and Culture, translated by Shen, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2009.

2. clement greenberg's Late Works, edited by Robert C Morgan, S? o Paulo: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

3. clement greenberg, Self-made Aesthetics: Observation of Art and Taste, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

4. clement greenberg, clement greenberg: collected works and comments, 4 volumes, edited. John O 'Brien, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986-1993.

5. Donald Cuspide, clement greenberg: Art Critics, University of Wisconsin Press, 1979.

6. Shen: "Greenberg: Modernism and Complaints", in Twentieth Century Art Criticism, Hangzhou: China Academy of Fine Arts Press, 2003, p. 153- 178.

(Originally published in Rong Baozhai (Contemporary Art Edition), No.3, 20 10)