In my last post, I provided some quotes, thanks to Artspace, that could be attributed to four important critics as a back-to-school time test. And here are the answers:
Clement Greenberg
“I would not deny being one of those critics who educate themselves in public.â€
“Everyone dislikes technical criticism of painting; and there’s no other decent kind. What’s wanted is horseshit. And the horseshit is so easy to write brilliantly, but I shan’t.â€
“The new American painting is not ‘pure’ art, since the extrusion of the object was not for the sake of the aesthetic. The apples weren’t brushed off the table in order to make room for perfect relations of space and color. They had to do so that nothing would get in the way of the act of painting.â€
“Painting became the means of confronting in daily practice the problematic nature of modern individuality. In this way Action Painting restored a metaphysical point to art.â€
Meyer Schapiro
“There is no ‘pure art,’ unconditioned by experience; all fantasy and formal construction, even the random scribbling of the hand, are shaped by experience and by nonaesthetic concerns.â€
Leo Steinberg
“Whenever there appears an art that is truly new and original, the men who denounce it first and loudest are artists.â€
“What really depressed me was what I felt these works were able to do to all other art. The pictures of de Kooning and Kline, it seemed to me, were suddenly tossed into one pot with Rembrandt and Giotto.â€
Artspace didn’t construct its articles as a test; they are part of its Art 101 feature, a “Know Your Critics” series. Each article has much more useful reminders — or crib sheets. Here are the links:
What Did Clement Greenberg Do?
Now, who’s in the photo?
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Artspace