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Clement Greenberg

Clement Greenberg Quotes

Essayist

Clement Greenberg (January 16, 1909 - May 7, 1994) was an influential American art critic and literary critic. His critical theories had a profound impact on 20th-century American art and literature, particularly in the field of abstract expressionism. Known for his insights into modernist art, Greenberg emphasized the form and content of art, advocating for the pursuit of pure formal expression in art.

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All Art Artist Kitsch Enough Art Is Ends Ifs Culture Difficult Difficulty Effects Eye Modernism Painting Photography Tradition Wells Accepted Avant Garde Carrying On

Famous Clement Greenberg Quotes

“If you want to change your art, change your habits.”

Ifs Want Art Habit

Author:Clement Greenberg

“I don't get into 'becauses.' When you come into a studio you see a number of works. My habit is to go to the one I like most. If you start to say, 'because,' you get into art jargon.”

Ifs Art Numbers Habit Studios Jargon

Author:Clement Greenberg

“Part of the triumph of modernist poetry is, indeed, to have demonstrated the great extent to which verse can do without explicit meaning and yet not sacrifice anything essential to its effect as art. Here, as before, successful art can be depended upon to explain itself.”

Art Can Do Successful Sacrifice Effects Essentials Triumph Poetry Is Verses Explicit

Author:Clement Greenberg

“Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art.”

Art Used Attention Mediums Realistic Modernism

Book:The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 4: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969

Source: The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 4: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969

“It's as though aesthetic value, quality, could be preserved only by concentrating on 'absolute' or 'autonomous' art: thus on visual art... that held and moved and stirred the beholder as sheer decoration could not.”

Art Values Quality Absolutes Moved Visuals Aesthetic Sheer Concentrating Decoration Visual Art Autonomous Beholder

Book:Clement Greenberg, Late Writings

Source: Clement Greenberg, Late Writings

“Nothing could be further from the authentic art of our time than the idea of a rupture of continuity. Art is - among other things - continuity, and unthinkable without it.”

Art Ideas Reality Art Is Our Time Continuity Unthinkable Rupture

Book:The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 4: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969

Source: The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 4: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969

“One is also reminded of how, in art, the tortoise so often overtakes the hare.”

Art Recognition Hares Tortoises

Book:Hofmann: twelve color plates, twenty-one black and white illustrations

Source: Hofmann: twelve color plates, twenty-one black and white illustrations

“For every good art critic there may be ten great artists.”

May Art Artist Ten Critics Very Good Great Art Great Artist Good Art Art Critic

Author:Clement Greenberg

“The main trouble with avant-garde art and literature, from the point of view of fascists and Stalinists, is not that they are too critical, but that they are too "innocent," that it is too difficult to inject effective propaganda, that kitsch is more pliable to this end.”

Art Ends Literature Difficult Views Trouble Critical Point Of View Innocent Propaganda Fascists Avant Garde Kitsch Avant Garde Art

Book:Art and Culture: Critical Essays

Source: Art and Culture: Critical Essays

“Art is a matter strictly of experience, not of principles and what counts first and last in art is quality, all other things are secondary.”

Firsts Art Matter Lasts Quality Principles Art Is Firsts And Lasts

Book:Art and Culture: Critical Essays

Source: Art and Culture: Critical Essays

“The reality of art is disclosed only in experience, not in reflection upon experience.”

Art Reality Reflection Art Is

Book:Art and Culture: Critical Essays

Source: Art and Culture: Critical Essays

“Where Picasso paints cause, Repin paints effect. Repin predigests art for the spectator and provides a short cut to the pleasure of art that is necessarily difficult in genuine art. Repin, or kitsch, is synthetic art.”

Art Causes Difficult Pleasure Cutting Effects Paint Genuine Spectators Kitsch Synthetic Short Cuts

Book:Art and Culture: Critical Essays

Source: Art and Culture: Critical Essays

“The art in photography is literary art before it is anything else: its triumphs and monuments are historical, anecdotal, reportorial, observational before they are purely pictorial... The photograph has to tell a story if it is to work as art.”

Ifs Art Stories Photography Art Is Historical Photograph Triumph Monument Pictorial Literary Art

Author:Clement Greenberg

“Photography is the most transparent of the art mediums devised or discovered by man. It is probably for this reason that it proves so difficult to make the photograph transcend its almost inevitable function as document and act as a work of art as well.”

Men Wells Art Reason Difficult Prove Photography Function Photograph Mediums Inevitable Works Of Art Documents Transparent

Book:The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 2: Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949

Source: The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 2: Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949

“I myself happen to find, on the basis of experience and nothing else, that photography can be a high art.”

Art Happens Photography Bases High Art

Author:Clement Greenberg

“Where the Old Masters created an illusion of space into which one could imagine walking, the illusion created by a Modernist is one into which one can look, can travel through, only with the eye.”

Looks Art Eye Imagination Space Imagine Creation Painting Masters Walking Travel Creating Illusion Critics Modernism

Author:Clement Greenberg

“All profoundly original art looks ugly at first.”

Firsts Looks Art Work Originals Ugly Originality Original Art

Book:Clement Greenberg Between the Lines: Including a Previously Unpublished Debate with Clement Greenberg

Source: Clement Greenberg Between the Lines: Including a Previously Unpublished Debate with Clement Greenberg

“You like it, that's all, whether it's a landscape or abstract. You like it. It hits you. You don't have to read it. The work of art-sculpture or painting-forces your eye.”

Art Eye Force Painting Landscape Abstract Works Of Art Sculpture You Like It

Author:Clement Greenberg

“Art criticism, I would say, is about the most ungrateful form of 'elevated' writing I know of. It may also be one of the most challenging.. if only because so few people have done it well enough to be remembered.. but I'm not sure the challenge is worth it.”

People Ifs Knows Writing Wells May Art Done Enough Form Challenges Criticism Remembered Not Sure Worth It Ungrateful

Book:The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 2: Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949

Source: The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 2: Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949

“It has become apparent that art can have a startling impact without really being or saying anything startling — or new. The character itself of being startling, spectacular, or upsetting has become conventionalized, part of safe good taste.”

Art Character Taste Safe Impact Upset Spectacular Good Taste

Book:Avant-garde Attitudes: New Art in the Sixties

Source: Avant-garde Attitudes: New Art in the Sixties

“Art solves nothing, either for the artist himself or for those who receive his art.”

Art Artist Solve

Author:Clement Greenberg

About the Author

Born: January 16, 1909
Died: May 7, 1994
Known for: Essayist
Quotes: 39

Related Topics

Art Artist Kitsch Enough Art Is Ends Ifs Culture Difficult Difficulty Effects Eye Modernism Painting Photography Tradition Wells Accepted Avant Garde Carrying On

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People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

Art and Culture: Critical EssaysRelated source material

Clement Greenberg, Late WritingsRelated source material

Hofmann: twelve color plates, twenty-one black and white illustrationsRelated source material

The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 2: Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949Related source material

The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 4: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969Related source material

Avant-garde Attitudes: New Art in the SixtiesRelated source material

Clement Greenberg Between the Lines: Including a Previously Unpublished Debate with Clement GreenbergRelated source material

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