ON CRITICS AND GREENBERG:
A COMMUNICATION
Why is it that America, despite considerable creative vigor
and an unusual curiosity about painting, has never produced a reputable
art critic? The situation deserves to be investigated.
In Paris there has long been a tradition of avant-garde writing on
cultural subjects. It has depended, not so much on giving out random
opinions and evaluations, as on following an artist's development and
meeting him on his own terms. To critics of this type, if it were Cubism
in which they happened to be interested, it would not be of prime
importance whether the Cubists were necessarily as "great" as Seurat,
whether anybody at all could equal the best of other cultures, or any
such hazardous judgments ; for them it was no more fatal for Picasso
to imitate Lautrec than it was for Veronese to imitate Titian; they
would explore what appealed to them and present it to the public as
best they could. Of course I do not overlook the many ignorant and
mistaken columnists who clutter the Paris scene as noisily as here;
however, there always seemed to be a few* who could get their fingers
into the subject, and who acquired an eye for quality as well.
Unhappily the New York periodicals (and this goes for London,
too) have never offered anything comparable; even in the magazines
of intellectual standards one encounters only capricious snap-judgments,
and a complete absence of instinct for pictorial structure. The approach
-completely irresponsible as to accuracy or taste-has been with us so
long that we might say that it amounts to a tradition.
It is against such a background that we approach the writing of
Clement Greenberg. Greenberg offers a peculiar problem for the pro–
gressive artist. He has for some years recognized that modern painting
*
It is encouraging to remark that there are again several names, new since
the War-Degand, Marchand, Vrinat, Estienne, Descargues-affixed during
recent months to important articles on the younger abstract painters.
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