Video Review: Art Criticism

Greenberg on Art Criticism: An Interview by T.J Clark

Writing about the visual arts is much more challenging than writing about literature or music according to Greenberg.

Greenberg looks up to Tovey as a critic to remind himself he must remain relevant. Music critics must remain formalist they have no other choice because of the technicalities of it, visual art is different.

There are prejudices in art criticism, especially with modern art and its ‘unfixed notion’ of mainstream.

Many critics have acquired prejudices; but Greenberg states that a critic must stay receptive and open to any art, and even abstract art which he does not like has been some of the best art.

He can take his personal taste and puritanism out of the picture when criticizing a piece of art.

Great critics from the past were not philosophical but knew the nature of the value judgment. The value judgment is intuitive.

You place limit on nothing other than relevance which is a guideline rather than limit.

Certain artists prove themselves, not modern art globally.

He does not desire to discuss history when critiquing art but rather on aesthetics.

Art criticism of modern are can be a physical science. Not a science but relevant in something approaching that way. Criticism must involve some kind of argument

Stay AESTHETIC! It can be about the basis of the critic’s judgment.

There isn’t always more to be said that there is to say at first. Young critics want to fill in the pages; that’s not necessary.

Greenberg on Pollock: An Interview by T. J. Clark

When Greenberg met Pollock, Pollock’s future wife told him he would be a great painter.

Pollock painted his first splatter drip piece in 1947. Pollock wanted to paint large, movable pictures that will function between the easel and the mural.

Pollock hates easel paintings, but his own paintings remained easel paintings until the last of his career.

His paintings were transitional works from the easel to the mural.

Size was not the most distinct thing in Pollock’s historical paintings, it was the outside the boxed characteristic of modern paintings; he moved away from containment and orderliness.

The only demand Greenberg makes on art is that it be ‘good art.’

Some of Pollock’s paintings simply failed to the eye and even Pollock rejected them.

Pollock choose his particular way of applying paint to canvas because of the way the paint broke the plane, or how the paint "cut." The technique was a way to release the requirements of his wrist, elbow, and shoulder.
Pollock’s ‘drip’ paintings can be characterized as Apollonian rather than Dionysian.
No one has successfully explained what makes a painting succeed or fail.

Artists of his day, as well as Pollock himself, felt isolated and alone in the art world and the world at large. Even though several museums bought his paintings, Pollock remained a solitary figure.

Artists of the Pollock era (as well as most artists) desire fame and money. Fame meant exposure in magazines and newspapers. Money was a practical need to live better. 

Pollock did not achieve fame as much as he did notoriety. He might sell one picture a year.

A double-paged spread in a magazine and a film made about him were not Pollock's ideas.

Pollock realizes that his work would not be accepted as "painting." Even contemporaries put his work outside of what they would call “painting."

At the end of his life, Pollock admitted that he didn't take enough time looking at the Impressionists.

 Greenberg argues that if Pollock had lived longer and stopped drinking, he would have recovered. An early death was a romantic ideal for Pollock.

The Colonial Encounter: Views of Non-Western Art and Culture 

Dahome art is visually beautiful, but it is often ignored as art and treated as craft.

The 1900 Paris World Fair ran for 8 months. The colonial factions exposed the underlying nationalism of the event. Half the area was devoted to French imperialism while the rest represented other nations' colonies. The image of the colonies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was not coherent or consistent.

While most countries were symbolized by famous monuments of each country, the Dahomian exhibit consisted of a group of thatched structures, suggesting that there was no civilized infrastructure.

Images of African people showed violent behavior toward each other, fostering the notion that they are savages who might also turn against Europeans. That is how colonialism is justified.

Three figures from the 1900 Paris World Fair represent the three aspects of African people. They remain on exhibit today. A symbolic image from Dahome displayed at the 1900 World Fair is in the form of a stylized shark. The shark symbolizes Dahome's determination to protect its shores.

At the 1900 world Fair Algeria was treated differently from Dahome. Algeria had a much longer history of colonization than Dahome. The country's exhibits are displayed in two palaces

The Algerian exhibit is symptomatic of a much larger transformation that took place at the end of the 19th century. This was the transformation of travel into tourism.

The proliferation of portraits of Algerian women insured their familiarity to a broad public. The pictures promote the conflation of dance with promiscuity in Arab women.

An even more insidious side to using indigenous people in colonial exhibits were the display of naked African men and women in caged enclosures along with exotic species of the animal kingdom.

Europeans justify the pornographic nature of photographs of indigenous as scientific and artistic study. In the eyes of the women, however, is a refusal to appear satisfied with their treatment.

The Trocadero Museum is the French monument at the heart of the colonial exhibition at the 1900 World Fair. Thus, all the displays are a pseudo-scientific discourse that emphasizes racial differences.

The French created a dichotomy between the Dahome and Algerian exhibits. Though today the former French colonies are independent, they are still linked politically and economically with the West.

Colonial material culture is elevated to the level of art in the colonial exhibits at the 1900 World Fair. Yet, exhibits are devoid of information about cultural meaning these objects have within the indigenous cultures.

Exhibitions of material culture are displayed throughout the West. They show no connection with cultural meaning, and are evaluated through the eyes of Western viewers who believe they are seeing "art" rather than material cultural objects.

In a contemporary display of Palestinian costumes, the contemporary political context is integral to the display. The display exposes cultural erosion as well as resilient transformation in light of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

Indigenous material culture on display as art in Western collections can be tied to an appreciation by descendants of the original objects.

Jackson Pollock: Michael Fried and T. J. Clark in Conversation 

Michael Fried and T.J. Clark agree that Pollock is an enormously important modernist master who raises many questions with his work. They also acknowledge that he has been used as a negative point of reference for modern art. They agree on Pollock's importance in modern art but have offered conflicting reasons. Clark's emphasis is on the historical role of modern art while Fried is focused on the independence of its aesthetic.

Fried explains his opposition to art news in and the rhetoric of art in art news written in the 1950s. He strongly dislikes the description of art in vulgar existentialist terms.

Fried and Clark discuss an article in which Fried described Pollock's work as optical as opposed to tactical. He has since modified his ideas as he believes that was not a constructive point of view.

Michael early modernism stemmed from a rejection of the existentialist concept of action painting. Clark is also weary of existential melodrama but as a social historian has been concerned with relating art to other human action.

Clark defines Pollock's Lavender Mist quality as the ability of a painting to articulate the conditions of human beings at a particular moment.
Even with a certain level of agreement Clark and Fried offer accounts that pull in different direction partly because of the problem of adequately describing Pollock's work and relating defined terms to the artist's intentions.

Fried and Clark find that what makes Pollock's work critical can't be disentangled from describing what he's done. In this way the concentration his work requires challenges the distraction endemic in the wider culture.

Fried and Clark discuss Pollock in front of Autumn Rhythm. They now agree on the need for historical accounts of Pollock's radical abstraction but also that its historical significance can't be separated from its pictorial quality.

Fried and Clark are both committed to a historical way of looking at art and realize they are redefining the terms with which they speak of Pollock's work to reach a place of agreement over his historical importance.

Do the videos relate to the creation of your Art Criticism Project?

Yes, hearing critics, especially those like Greenberg, T.J Clark, and Michael Fried really help me understand how important it is when criticizing art to keep certain things in mind, and certain things out. I tended to agree with Michael Fried the most for his stance that art should be judged by its aesthetic independence. To me the history and artist doesn’t particularly matter as much as how it makes the viewer feel because art is about aesthetics, and aesthetics is about feeling. I am going to different strategies from all three critics during my art criticism project.

What is your opinion of the films? Do they add depth to your understanding of art criticism?

I appreciated the films though some of the interviews could be annoying. I appreciated the short length this time around during CEP week. They add depth to my understanding of art criticism because it reassures me that it’s not at all (or supposed to be) about personal taste. I understand how much thought and process goes into art criticism and how educated the critics are… in other words, they aren’t just opinionated know-it-alls, there is actually merit to how they critique, just no science…which seems difficult!