CLEMENT GREENBERG
855
My political views have indeed changed enormously. I no
longer "believe" in socialism, though I may still want it ideally. I've
become something of a political agnostic (yet it still goes against the
grain to vote Republican). At the same time I've turned more anti–
Bolshevik than ever (I can't call Leninism , communism; com–
munism, too, remains an ideal) . My revulsion (a repentant sinner's)
against leftist cant, leftist right-thinking, has become overriding.
Consequences bear it out, and I've come to take actual consequences
far more seriously than I used to . I read
Commentary
with relish for its
own allergy to leftist cant (I don't take its "conservatism" seriously;
it's not the same thing as reaction, which is the only thing I do take
seriously in that direction) .
Culture. I keep thinking, as I have for many years now, that
Western high culture is in decline, Spenglerian decline . But I think I
can isolate the decline: it's largely in point of cultivatedness and liter–
ature, on which cultivatedness depends most . I can't tell whether or
not music is in decline ; I suspect it, but distrust my suspicion; there
are those who know better. Science thrives, of course; Spengler was
so wrong in anticipating its decline in this century. More impor–
tantly, the world has become more humane in temper, despite all
appearances to the contrary ; I believe this because outrage has
become more frequent and widespread. What awful things used to
go on unnoticed in effect when I was young.
It
may be my bias as an art critic that leads me to see visual art
as a special case. (Visual art was a special case under decadence in
late Rome too.) Yes, the very best new painting and sculpture re–
main in the background for the time being, but they've been there
during each succeeding phase of modernism since Manet if not be–
fore . In the foreground everything philistines say, or used to say,
about modern art is being borne out : in the museums that pay atten–
tion to contemporary art, in the market, in the art press, in official
grants.
Some more canting of a sort, this time journalistic: about the
postmodern or postmodernism. Modernism in the arts began and
continues as a response to the threat of decadence. The visual arts
have been by and large the most resolute in this response (painting is
the "avant-garde" art above all others).
If
major
visual art is going to
keep on being made in foreseeable time, it won't be anything but
modernist. And as valuable as minor art can be and still is, major
has to be insisted on.
Much of Clement Greenberg's art criticism appeared in early issues of
Partisan Review.
