Critical Mass: Homage to Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg

by Beth S. Gersh-Nesic

Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning and American Art, 1940-1970, at the Jewish Museum in New York, sandwiches a splendid collection of Post-World War II American art between two titanic American Post-War art critics: Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) and Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978). "Clem" believed in the purity of abstract painting—its flatness, its reference to itself as art (the self-referential) and its contribution to the "progress" of Modernism (the road to the non-figurative as a crowning achievement). His primary concern was the object. Method: Formalism. Orientation: Kantian Idealism.

Harold focused on the process of making art, characterizing the work as a stage wherein the artist is the principle actor, struggling with his materials to express his authentic feelings. Rosenberg wrote the seminal essay "The American Action Painters" (1952), where we find the term "Action Painting" (a.k.a. Abstract Expressionism). Method: Biographical. Orientation: Existential.


Willem de Kooning (American, b. Netherlands, 1904-1997)
Gotham News, 1955
Oil on canvas
69 x 79 in. (175.3 x 200.7 cm)
Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1955
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.
© The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York


However, lest you think that "Action/Abstraction" is another name for "Harold and Clem Do the Cedar Street Bar" (a favorite Greenwich Village hangout for Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Phillip Guston, and other avant-garde intellectuals during the time)—forgetaboutit. The two critics intensely disliked each other. And if there is a heaven (which these two Jewish boys probably did not believe in), both are surely irked by sharing this moment in the sun.

They would also fail to notice that constructing an art exhibition based on critical theory takes enormous chutzpah—and a little mishugena thinking. Why? Because art criticism is boring. Very boring. (I speak self-referentially, of course.) Hardly a sexy premise for this summer's stellar line-up of art offerings in the Big Apple. (Although, it must be said that the names Pollock and de Kooning always generate the right kind of buzz.) Nevertheless, reducing the Greenberg-Rosenberg debate to watered down, pre-digested pap fit for general consumption does place the art in a supporting role—a strange idea for any art venue. Fortunately, the works transcend the docent-ready distillation, which ... come to think of it ... brings John Latham's conceptual piece, Still and Chew to mind.

Now enshrined in a leather case, Still and Chew (1966) began at a party where Latham's students at St. Martin's School of Art in London, tore up, chewed and spit out pages from Greenberg's Art and Culture, a 1961 collection of critical essays, which the artist had borrowed from the school's library. Latham stewed the masticated pulp for several months, returned the "essence of Greenberg" in a vial to the library and then got the boot, since this very prestigious art institution was not amused. Still and Chew displays the evidence of the conceptual piece: the infamous vial and relevant documentation (such as a late notice from St. Martin's library). It belongs to the Museum of Modern Art, about forty blocks south of the Jewish Museum.


Jackson Pollock (American, 1912-1956)
Untitled, 1951
Ink on paper
16 1/2 x 20 1/2 in. (41.9 x 52.1 cm)
The Clement Greenberg Collection, Museum Purchase
with funds provided by Tom and Gretchen Holce
Portland Art Museum
© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York


While Action/Abstraction isn’t exactly a strained gruel, it does seem to press the art into service for the sake of elucidating Greenberg's and Rosenberg's sound bites, strategically posted all over the galleries on text panels and small labels meant to identify the art. Indeed, it feels at times as through the art has been confined within an academically-inspired Greenberg-Rosenberg sandwich that quickly loses its curatorial freshness, and finally wilts amid the eternal vitality of the works themselves (some already half-a-century old).

So let's rewind and begin again, brushing Greenberg and Rosenberg to the side: Action/Abstraction is a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to see some of the best examples of Post-1945 art. Anyone who has memorized America's abstract classics, from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism, would experience a rush of pre-exam flashbacks or the warm reassurance of greeting "old friends" (perhaps seen "in person" for the first time): Arshile Gorky's The Liver Is the Cock's Comb (1944; Albright-Knox Art Gallery); Willem de Kooning's Gothem News (1955; Albright-Knox Art Gallery); Helen Frankenthaler's Mountains and Sea (1952; National Gallery of Art); and Ad Reinhardt's deceptively not-so-black Abstract Painting (1962; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago).


Hans Hofmann (American, b. Germany, 1880-1966)
Fantasia, 1943
Oil, duco, and casein on plywood
51 1/2 x 36 5/8 in. (130.8 x 93 cm)
Gift of the artist
Berkeley Art Museum, University of California
© Renate, Hans & Maria Hofmann Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Benjamin Blackwell


In addition, rarely accessible works such as Hans Hofmann's Provincetown House (1940; private collection) and Jackson Pollock's Totem Lesson 2, (1945; (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra) join exceptional examples from museums all over the United States: Clyfford Still's Untitled (formerly Self-Portrait; 1945; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art); Norman Lewis' Twilight Sounds (1947; Saint Louis Art Museum); Lee Krasner's enchanting Blue and Black (1951-53; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston); Mark Rothko's Orange and Yellow (1956; Albright-Knox Art Gallery); and Barnett Newman's Onement IV (1949; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio).

Sculpture is here too. The purely abstract and semi-abstract creations by Herbert Ferber, Seymour Lipton. Ibram Lassaw, David Smith, David Hare, Louise Nevelson, Ann Truit and Anthony Caro appear with a token hand-painted Pop-Art piece Painted Heart (1961) by Claes Oldenberg and Allan Kaprow's 1962 installation Words (interpreted by contemporary artist Martha Rosler), bringing the show to the threshold of Post-Modernism and the end of the Greenberg-Rosenberg hegemony.


Herbert Ferber (American, 1906-1991)
Surrational Zeus II, 1947
Bronze
50 7/8 x 22 x 29 1/2 in. (129.2 x 55.9 x 75 cm)
Leslie and Roslyn Goldstein Fund, 2004-43
The Jewish Museum, New York
© 2008 Herbert Ferber Estate
Photo: Richard Goodbody


Sadly, the few examples of modernist synagogue art, created by some the sculptors included in the exhibition, are available only in hard-to-read black and white photographs lined up in a grid formation in the last room on the first floor--midway between the two segments of this two-story show. These modernist synagogue works become footnotes in this context, when in fact they offer a more tantalizing story for Jewish and non-Jewish audiences: Did abstract art fulfill a need to re-conceptualize Jewish faith in the wake of the Holocaust? Let us hope an exhibition of modernist synagogue art in relation to its historical and political context will take place some day soon.

On a positive note: the exhibition catalogue deserves the highest of praise as it complements Irving Sandler's groundbreaking The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism (1970), which the present exhibition seems to illustrate. The essays are written by Norman L. Kleeblatt, Susan and Elihu Rose Chief Curator of the Jewish Museum, who conceived of and curated Action/Abstraction in collaboration with Maurice Berger, Senior Research Scholar of the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland and Senior Fellow at The Vera List Center for Art and Politics, New School University, whose timeline brought my attention to Still and Chew. Douglas Dreishpoon, Chief Curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and Charlotte Eyermann, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum (both of whom consulted on the project), plus Debra Bricker Balkan, Morris Dickstein, Mark Godfrey, Caroline A. Jones, and Irving Sandler also contributed essays to this magnificent tome.

View a selection of works from Action/Abstraction.

References and Further Reading:

Kleeblatt, Norman L., ed. Action/Abstraction:
Pollock, de Kooning and American Art, 1940-1970.
New York : The Jewish Museum and Yale University Press, 2008.

Perreault, John. "John Latham: By the Book."
Retrieved 03 August, 2008.

Rosenberg, Harold. "The American Action Painters," Art News, December 1952.


Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning and American Art, 1940-1970 is touring on the following schedule:

• May 4-September 21, 2008: The Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street 533, New York, NY 10128 (Telephone: 212-423-3200; Website).
  
  
• October 19, 2008-January 11, 2009: Saint Louis Art Museum, One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, MO 63110 (Telephone: 314-721-0072; Website).
  
  
• February 13-May 31, 2009: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222 (Telephone: 716-882-8700; Website).

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From your Guide: Beth Gersh-Nesic is an art history professor, author, art critic and the director of the New York Arts Exchange, an arts education service which offers tours, lectures and workshops in various venues, including museums, galleries, artists' studios and arts organizations.