KAREN WILKIN
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crucial point that "Greenberg never allowed his ideology to prevent him
from seeing clearly the painting and sculpture about which he wrote, and
though he believed devoutly that 'the very best painting, the major paint–
ing, of our age is abstract,' he was no less capable of responding sensitively
to the work of such gifted representationalists as John Marin, Milton
Avery, and Edward Hopper."
Teachout shares some of Corbett's distaste for the Color-Field
painters, believing that Greenberg overestimated their long-term impor–
tance, but unlike Corbett, he doesn't assume that this obviates Greenberg's
own long-term significance. "This time," Teachout writes, "the prophet of
abstract expressionism had bet on the wrong horse, for the high serious–
ness of late modernism was already in the process of being supplanted by
the playful nihilism of the post-modern era." But that matters less to
Teachout than Greenberg's "having produced a body of writing about art
that is fully worthy of comparison wi th the bes t work of the bes t cri tics
of the twentieth century. Even now, it is impossible to read him without
being stirred by the compelling force of his aesthetic convictions."
Curiously, whatever their own aesthetic convictions, almost none of
the reviewers question Rubenfeld's accuracy. They appear to believe
implicitly everything she reports, especially, it seems, the more scurrilous
stories. Mind you, Rubenfeld obviously believes them herself, according
ample space to anyone with anything really discrediting to report-from
corrupt dealings to thuggish behavior-whether the claim can be substan–
tiated or not. A good deal of this sort of thing is plainly verifiable. There
is ample documentation, for example, for Greenberg's heavy drinking and
the predictably deplorable effect it had on how he treated even people to
whom he was close. The peculiarities of the branch of psychiatry he
adhered to are a matter of public record. And so on. But Rubenfeld relies
heavily on innuendo, quoting at length sources who say things like "I can't
prove it, but I am sure...." and "We all believed that.. . ," not so much to
demonstrate how colleagues and peers reacted to Greenberg, but to imply
malfeasance. (Rubenfeld constantly speculates about Greenberg's motives,
but she rarely questions those of her informants.) And even reviewers who
should know better-Peter Plagens, in a skeptical, street-smart article in the
Los Angeles Times,
for example--swallows Rubenfeld's assertions whole.
Plagens, who is justifiably proud of his cool independence of mind,
is neither a Greenbergian nor an anti-Greenbergian, but he takes
Pollock, Frankenthaler, and Louis seriously. More importantly, Plagens
genuinely admires Greenberg's writing and values his contribution to
the discipline of criticism. Whatever his disagreements with the crit–
ic's aesthetic, "we who love art owe a hell of a lot to Greenberg,"
Plagens writes; ''I'd rather have spent half an hour reading a wonder-
