Clement Greenberg and Modernism

The essence of Modernism lies . . . in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself. . . . What had to be exhibited and made explicit was that which was unique and irreducible not only in art in general but also in each particular art. Each art had to determine, through the operations peculiar to itself, the effects peculiar and exclusive to itself (Stiles and Selz 2).

Greenberg demonstrates that in part, formalism was a means of explaining the value of nonrepresentational works which could not be easily associated with a social meaning. Greenberg found that a recognizable image adds conceptual meaning to a picture, but that the fusion of conceptual with aesthetic meaning does not affect the quality of the work. He would find that in an earlier era free-standing pictorial and sculptural art, as distinct from decoration, was wholly identified with the representational, the figurative, and the descriptive. The shift to nonrepresentational art caused many to question whether something was not being lost and whether even the best abstract painting did not leave the

. . .
ting the photographic images, Estes created finished paintings of geometric balance and surprising spatial complexity. Many of his silent and unpopulated cityscapes, with their multiple mirrored reflecting surfaces, dealt with the overload of information in contemporary culture (Stiles and Selz 172). On the one hand, Estes is praised as a rare genius and a singular artist, but on the other hand, Estes himself proclaims that he is allied with all realist painters. Abstract Expressionism developed as part of the New York School in the 1940s and into the 1950s. The artist for Pollock and others had a personal relationship with the work of art in that the artwork was seen as reflecting the process of painting itself. These artists had borrowed from surrealism the idea of psychic improvisation as a way of releasing the power of the unconscious mind. For Pollock, the painting reflected the process to such an extent that the work was never considered finished but always in a state of becoming. Pollock also derived images and ideas from Jung, though the degree to which this is true is uncertain, with some critics arguing that a programmatic Jungian symbolism underlies the images, though no one has succeeded in providing a consis
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Stiles Selz, Andy Warhol, York School, Clement Greenberg, Night Square, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Estes, Pop Art, Greenberg Art, Jackson Pollock, stiles selz, stiles selz 2, hand estes, night square, de kooning's, de kooning, abstract expressionism, pop art, selz 2, art art, commercial art,
Approximate Word count = 1524
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)