BOOKS
ART AND CRITICISM
ART AND CULTURE, CRITICAL ESSAYS. By Clement Greenberg.
Beocon Press. $6.00.
If
the history of modern art contains many great names,
modem criticism of painting and sculpture includes at least a few.
The list of the best is short and well-known: Baudelaire, Zola,
Ruskin, Aurier, Huysmans, Feneon. As both painters and
poets
are fond of pointing out, these men were not "just critics," but
also writers. Each was the enthusiastic early discoverer and de–
fender of one important contemporary artist. In the course of this
defense each critic in some way identified himself publicly with
the man whose work he supported, and became, or
in
the case of
Baudelaire imagined himself to be, his friend.-Here Aurier is an
exception. (I omit from this list ApoIIinaire, whose generously
propagandizing
Cubist Painters
overflows with the early enthu–
siasm of great criticism, but lacks its required discrimination; and
also Roger Fry, whose introduction of Cezanne to England, though
badly needed at the time, was more critical history than bold
contemporary criticism, socially rather than aesthetically adven–
turous.) Obviously, none of these men changed the course of
modern art, although some of them, being normative critics, would
have liked to have done so ; but they did quicken, and thus at
least deflect, the stream of acceptance.
In the United States only Clement Greenberg has been
pos–
sessed of this particular combination of personal and critical
in–
volvement, has had the conviction and the insight to make
him–
self the champion of one significant painter of his generation.
He
was Jackson Pollock's public and private friend, and his critical
position has become identified with his defense of Pollock and the
New York School of Painters. It is thus strange that this collection
includes no single essay devoted to Pollock. There are some pages–
less than those given to others- in the discussion of "American-
