Rereading Abstract Expressionism, Clement Greenberg and the Cold War

236 Pages·2021·3.09 MB·English

by  Daniel Neofetou

Rereading Abstract Expressionism,
Clement Greenberg and the
Cold War

Rereading Abstract Expressionism,
Clement Greenberg and the
Cold War
Daniel Neofetou
BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS
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First published in the United States of America 2022
Copyright © Daniel Neofetou, 2022
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Cover image: Joan Mitchell, Untitled, ca. 1955, Oil on canvas, 17 x 16 in.,
(43.18 x 40.64 cm). Collection Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown,
Ohio © Estate of Joan Mitchell
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
List of Abbreviations vii
Introduction 1
1 Greenberg’s Trotskyism 11
2 Figuring negation 31
3 Making things of which we know not
what they are 71
4 Greenberg’s Kantianism contra Greenberg’s positivism 101
5 The silent world of the sensible 117
6 Denunciation and anticipation 141
Epilogue 159
Notes 169
Bibliography 203
Index 222
Acknowledgements
This book began as a PhD thesis, and so, first, thanks go to Josie Berry, for four
years of dedicated supervision while I fitfully changed direction, and to Marina
Vishmidt, for secondary supervision over the final year of writing. Thanks
to everyone who was there for me when I suffered a (minor but debilitating)
breakdown in 2016, particularly Luke Carlisle, Kristina Tarasova, Kat Black,
and Miri Davidson. In turning the thesis into a book, I benefitted from a Getty
Library Research Grant, made possible by the donation of Michael Silver. Thanks
for the very incisive comments on the manuscript from the anonymous reviewer
whom I swiftly identified as Ian Rothwell, and thanks to Ian for also allowing me
to hone the ideas in this book in guest lectures on his course at the University of
Edinburgh. Most importantly, however, thanks to my parents for being as utterly
and totally unconditionally loving and supportive as it is possible for parents
to be.
Abbreviations
AT Adorno, Theodor W. (1997) Aesthetic Theory. Trans. Robert Hullot-
Kentor. London: Routledge
ND Adorno, Theodor W. (1973) Negative Dialectics. Trans. E. B. Ashton.
London: Routledge
AVB Bernstein, J. M. (2006) Against Voluptuous Bodies: Late Modernism
and the Meaning of Painting. Stanford: Stanford University Press
ACC Craven, David (1999) Abstract Expressionism as Cultural Critique:
Dissent During the McCarthy Period. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
NY Guilbaut, Serge (1983) How New York Stole The Idea of Modern Art.
Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
CEC1 Greenberg, Clement (1986) The Collected Essays and Criticism: Volume
1. Ed. John O’Brian. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
CEC2 (1986) The Collected Essays and Criticism: Volume 2. Ed. John O’Brian.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
CEC3 (1993) The Collected Essays and Criticism: Volume 3. Ed. John O’Brian.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
CEC4 (1993) The Collected Essays and Criticism: Volume 4. Ed. John O’Brian.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
PPA Jachec, Nancy (2000) The Philosophy and Politics of Abstract
Expressionism 1940-1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
EA Jones, Caroline A. (2005) Eyesight Alone: Clement Greenberg’s
Modernism and the Bureaucratization of the Senses. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press
VI Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1968) The Visible and the Invisible. Trans.
Alphonso Lingis Evanston: Northwestern University Press
viii Abbreviations
PP Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1993) The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader:
Philosophy and Painting. Eds. Galen A. Johnson and Michael B. Smith
Evanston: Northwestern University Press
SWI Newman, Barnett (1990) Selected Writings and Interviews. Ed. John P.
O’Neill. New York: Alfred A. Knopf
MA Schapiro, Meyer (1982) Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries. New York:
George Braziller
LA Trotsky, Leon (1970) Literature and Art. Ed. Paul N. Siegel. London:
Pathfinder
Introduction
In an interview with Robert Burstow published in Frieze upon his deathin
1994, the critic Clement Greenberg denounced as ‘a lot of shit’ the notion that
‘the State Department supported American art and that it was part of the cold
war, and so forth’ (Burstow 1994: 33). In this, he was referring to the revisionist
accounts of Abstract Expressionism forwarded by art historians since the 1970s,
which interrogate how and why, in the years following the Second World War,
Abstract Expressionism was promulgated in overseas exhibitions organized
by bodies with vested interest in US capitalism, particularly the United States
Information Agency and the International Council at the Museum of Modern
Art. While they differ on certain points, all of the revisionist historians contend
that Abstract Expressionism was exported as a cultural buttress to the US post-
war economic-military dominance of the world, particularly in Western Europe,
and all of them argue that this decision was not arbitrary, that something in the
artworks rendered them amenable to such co-optation.
The most cited of these accounts is certainly Serge Guilbaut’s How New York
Stole the Idea of Modern Art (1983). However, it was preceded by shorter essays
by scholars such as Max Kozloff and Eva Cockcroft, and succeeded by other
book-length studies, most recently Nancy Jachec’s The Philosophy and Politics
of Abstract Expressionism (2000). Now, these accounts have consistently faced
criticism.1 However, their conclusions are nevertheless so pervasively accepted
that, as Claude Cernuschi notes, ‘art historians and social critics now repeat
[them] without deeming it in need of justification, documentation, or defence’
(1999: 32). As Irving Sandler, author of the once-canonical and resolutely
apolitical account of the movement, Abstract Expressionism: The Triumph of
American Painting (1970), has more recently written in frustration, ‘Guilbaut’s
allegation has come to be the received wisdom for several generations of art
historians’ (2009: 173). For an indication of the extent to which this is the
case, one need only note that the writers of both the lead catalogue essay and
educational guide to an exhibition as institutional as Abstract Expressionism at
the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2016 felt obliged to acknowledge the