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but it has been forgotten that he was also, in fact, criticized for saying
that the Abstract Expressionists represented the next advance in the his–
tory and tradition of art.
In later years, and more and more frequently, Clement Greenberg
has been accused of being dogmatic. It is true that he was somewhat
dogmatic or, at least, assertive. But it also has been forgotten that he
had to fight against the very large opposition to the new art. Not only
were most people, including critics and intellectuals, entrenched in the
resistance to the abstract expressionists, but even some of my colleagues
on
Partisan Review
scoffed at the new movement and at Clem's advocacy
of it. (I, myself, learned to see Jackson Pollock's work because Clem
showed me how to look at it.) For different reasons, Philip Rahv, James
Johnson Sweeney, and George
L.
K. Morris were opposed to Clem's
writing, and I had to insist to get Clem printed. There is, for example,
the amusing story of Rahv once saying to Harold Rosenberg that
Rothko was just a house painter. Rosenberg, who was never at a loss for
a clever remark, said to Rahv, "Don't you think it is interesting that a
house painter painted these pictures?"
In such an atmosphere, it is understandable that Clem's observations
were considered too avant-garde, too far out, and on the dogmatic side.
And one is reminded of Matthew Arnold's reply to the charge that he
was dogmatic. "Sure," Arnold said, "but 1 am right." And so was Clem.
We will miss him.
French Stalinists
There are those who know that French intellectuals
after the war were in a Stalinist trance. But Tony Judt's recent book,
Past Impeifect,
creates an even more dismal picture by supplying facts that
some experts and natives didn't know. To be sure, some of this is old
news, and, presumably, not so pertinent today as it was before the demise
of Communism in the former Soviet Union and in the Eastern European
countries formerly under Russian domination. But the political lessons
are still useful, especially since the academy, for instance, is rife with llltra–
radical movements, such as neo-Marxism for one, that echo some of the
modes of thinking which nourished the apologists for Stalin.
The main French intellectuals Judt cites are Sartre, Merleau-Ponty,
de Beauvoir, Mounier, Domenach, and Bourdet, and the extent of their
support of Stalinism is staggering. Perhaps the most shocking betrayal
was that of Julian Benda, the author of the famous
Treason oj the
