Avant-Garde and Kitsch
Clement Greenberg
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NE AND THE SAME
civilization produces simultaneously two
such different things as a poem by T. S. Eliot and a Tin Pan Alley
song, or a painting by Braque and a
Saturday Evening Post
cover.
All four are on the order of culture, and ostensibly, parts of the
same culture and products of the same society. Here, however,
their connection seems to end. A poem by Eliot and a poem by
Eddie Guest-what perspective of culture is large enough to
enable us to situate them in an enlightening relation to each other?
Does the fact that a disparity such as this within the frame of a
single cultural tradition, is
~md
has been taken for granted-does
this fact indicate that the disparity is a part of the natural order of
things? Or is it something entirely new, and particular to our age?
The answer involves more than an investigation in aesthetics.
It appears to me that it is necessary to examine more closely and
with more originality than hitherto the relationship between
aesthetic
experien~e
as met by the specific-not generalized–
individual, and the social and historical contexts in which that
experience takes place. What is brought to light will answer, in
addition to the question posed above, other and perhaps more
important ones.
I.
A society, as it becomes less and less able, in the course of
its development, to justify the inevitability of its particular forms,
breaks up the accepted notions upon which artists and writers must
depend in large part for communication with their audiences. It
becomes difficult tq assume anything. All the verities involved by
religion, authority, tradition, style, are thrown into question, and
the writer or artist is no longer able to estimate the response of his
audience to the symbols and references with which he works. In
the past such a state of affairs has usually resolved itself into a
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