How Does Greenberg Descrbe an Art of Pure Form
click here or on image for RealAudio of lecture -- includes questions and answers Transcript of a talk given by Clement Greenberg at Western Michigan University, Jan 18, 1983.. Includes answers to questions from the audience. Thanks to John Link.
The objectivity of taste is central to Greenberg's criticism -- one of the cornerstones, as it were, of his "critical theory." It's as well a central bone of contention for his many critics and detractors, who in some cases misunderstand the concept, in others disagree with (or strongly disapprove of) Kant. In the 20th Century the concept of taste was often conflated with the notion of personal preference and rather elaborate and unconvincing arguments were brought forth to deny the objectivity of taste and to drag something like personal preference to a kind of pseudo-universality. Equally this lecture makes articulate, Greenberg held fast to Kant and objectivity.
-- TF
W ELL Sense of taste! T ASTE is a discussion that became compromised during the 19th century. It was in good continuing in the 18th, when a philosopher like Kant, and English philosophers of aesthetics took for granted that that's the faculty you exerted in experiencing art and experiencing anything aesthetically. Then in the 19th century it wore down into something that had to do with nutrient, wearing apparel, article of furniture, ornamentation, and and so along, and became very much compromised. At present I call back it's a much handier word than aesthetic judgement or faculty of gustation, faculty, and that it should be rehabilitated, if only because, while nosotros can't define it, we recognize it. And it's got a overnice former-fashioned flavor to it that I particularly similar. And one other affair, gustatory modality is intuitive and nobody notwithstanding knows what goes on in intuition. The psychologists haven't been able to accept intuition apart, nor have the philosophers. Well, past the same token, nobody yet has been able to take apart art or aesthetic experience. Well, in that location is talk, especially nowadays, about swings of taste, turns of taste, and so forth. Truthful taste doesn't swing, doesn't veer. The very notion of taste swinging is anomalous. True taste, genuine gustation, develops, expands, grows. It changes merely insofar equally it corrects itself, true sense of taste. And it doesn't practise that temperamentally, merely every bit office of the process of its growth. Growth means increasing openness, catholicity, inclusion more than exclusion. Every bit you go along, go older and look at more than and more art you find yourself liking more and more fine art, without having to lower your standards. Sense of taste refines itself; it'southward truthful. Information technology discriminates more as it develops, and yet at the same time, paradoxically, it becomes opener. Open in this way: that you lot look at Hindu sculpture, say, in the same way, mostly, as you look at contemporary fine art or the art of the old masters or any other kind of art. And you look, it'southward hoped, with the same honesty.
One of the afflictions of art and of sense of taste is the untruth you may tell yourself about the operations of your taste, or permit's say, the results of your taste and the untruth y'all may tell to others. You're told that Raphael was a great painter and you tin can't see it yourself, but since you've been told it, you've read it everywhere and and so forth, you look at a Raphael and y'all may wait at a failed 1 and say, "well, information technology's got to be expert because Raphael is so famous, the regime say he's so good." That'due south 1 of the worst means in which to brainstorm or to keep looking at art. On the other hand, when the authorities do say that someone'south skillful and you can't see it for yourself, it does help, it'due south almost essential, that you go dorsum and look again, and over again. Yous may still decide that this particular Raphael is no adept, merely, at least, you've tried and y'all've been honest, and with yourself to a higher place all. I've known collectors who owned Picassos who really preferred Norman Rockwell. If only they had endemic up to it, it would have been way meliorate for the life of art, and not that I remember Rockwell is so negligible, I accept to use his proper noun because everybody knows it. He wasn't that bad of a painter, incidentally, but there are people who lie to themselves that way, and I don't think that that helps art, in general.
Now, taste in the Western world has usually functioned in a pretty normal manner, I would say. The resistance to modernist fine art that started with modernism, itself, was new -- the conflict between the going, "cultivated" taste and this new art which happened to be the best art of its time -- but gustation itself operated in a normal, and I would say in an honest way. You lot could say that the people who resisted modernism didn't try hard enough, as I think they didn't. Simply in the stop, after a generation or and then, each phase of modernism in painting and sculpture and the other arts overcame, and somehow the resistance faded. Just in that location was already present one fallacious addiction -- I can't call it a fallacy -- the concern of rejecting a body of art in toto, instead of looking at the works one by 1. In that location were classifications -- this happened with the Impressionists and they were dismissed wholesale, at offset, and so they became accepted, maybe wholesale. That "fallacy," the business of approaching art generically or categorically, or classifitorily -- that's a bad discussion, but nomenclature pertains today more than it e'er did before. There's a reason for it and in that location's a history behind it and hardly anybody here is one-time plenty to have witnessed that history in person. I don't call back enough people know that modernism as an thought, the whole notion of it, the notion of the avant-garde, of avant-garde fine art, actually triumphed in a full general mode. in a wide manner, only towards the terminate of the 1950's and the beginning of the sixty's. And that had to do, in the offset place, with Pollock's consecration. Pollock actually began to become over around 1960; his pictures really began to sell then. He was dead -- had been dead for a half-decade past then -- and that was a kind of turning point. Together with that came Barnett Newman's nearly embodiment which took place '59, '60-'61.
Now Pollock was first greeted when he went "all-over" -- when he began to drip and pour -- by his fellow artists besides past the art public as breaking with art as it had been hitherto. His paintings were idea to be uncontrolled effusions which had nothing to do with painting every bit such, painting as a discipline; information technology wasn't a question of liking or non liking them and, finally, his proper noun hung on. He became notorious before he always became famous, and in the end, there he was: Pollock was this big name, with this large -- not myth, not fable, this big reputation. When Newman had his offset ii shows in '50 and '51 in New York I remember some of his swain painters proverb to me, didn't I recollect that Newman was out to kill painting, that this was the death of painting, this was worse than Pollock? How could painting become on if Newman'southward kind of painting stuck; if this was considered painting? Well, Newman didn't prove once more for some other eight years. He showed again in '59 and for some reason, his success had already been prepared. His show made him a slap-up name and he was taken for granted as a great painter. In fact, the school of Minimalism took off from his case, as some of the Minimalists, themselves, say. And what coincided with this was the collapse , the spring of '62,of second generation Abstract Expressionism. Information technology was equally though overnight, betwixt February and May '62, it was wiped out; it was truly dramatic, and I don't use the word dramatic lightly, and that, also, shook cultivated fine art opinion and for some reason the European, especially the French, equivalent of Abstract Expressionism, "l'art autre" or tachism collapsed at the same time -- all in the early 'sixty's. Now it's truthful the beginning generation Abstruse Expressionists, their reputations floated to the top in a short while, only in '62 Popular Art became the reigning motion in this country, and the second American fine art tendency to make an impression in Europe.
Now, sure conclusions were fatigued from these events, and from the kind of art involved in them. Even before these conclusions were drawn, it began to exist recognized -- more widely than ever before -- that more often than not the best fine art of the preceding three-quarters of a century had been modernist, avant-garde. Some people had recognized that all along, merely this time, in the early 60'southward, the recognition seemed to come with a blindside and younger people, for the first fourth dimension, took the recognition as a thing of course. At that place was no longer whatever arguing nigh it. Then, Pollock's success, Newman's success, furthered the conclusion that the reason for modernism's success in the past was that information technology had shocked prevailing taste. That information technology had been far out, that information technology had been new, new, new, and that that was probably -- this all took identify rather unconsciously or subconsciously, that you fabricated your mark in art history past provoking shock and resistance and past doing the unexpected. And doing it in a spectacular way. Well, then, now Popular Art wasn't and then much a product of these conclusions, I don't think. I remember Pop Fine art was simply and not so simply a revolt against hard art. I'll go into that a bit later. Only later that, Minimal, Conceptual, Inter-media, Functioning, Blueprint -- all in pursuit of the far out. That was your guarantee of getting into art history. At that place weren't mercenary motives here. The artists I know -- of course they all wanted to brand a living similar other normal people, but they wanted in a higher place all to go into art history. And that'due south rather normal, likewise.
Now, some of the logic, the succession of trends or fashions (and I phone call them fashions advisedly) similar Pop and like Neophotographic Realism and the New Expressionism, proceeded on the logic that if you turned effectually on the kind of new art that had immediately preceded you lot, that would somehow count, that would be pregnant, that had a value in itself. Photographic Realism said, in effect: "we're going to shock you by doing the matter that'due south been anathema since the mid-l9th century. We're going to stay closer to nature, we're going to stay as close to nature as photography does, and we all know that's atrocious, and that's precisely why we're going to practice it." Design Painting or Decorative Pattern Painting, now that was a misunderstanding a lilliputian bit because everybody knew that to be decorative was to be bad -- in spite of Matisse, in spite of Pollock, in spite of always so many other modernist painters of the past who were first rejected as decorative. But at present after Photographic Realism, "we're going to go in for decoration in its nigh decorative, well-nigh uncomplicated form, as it were. We're going to paint patterns but because that, also, has been abomination all along, every bit far as moving picture making is concerned." At present each tendency more or less turned on the preceding one, and then manner went in the world of contemporary fine art. But the trouble or the damage of all this was not washed and then much to fine art, itself -- skilful art kept being produced all along, and still is, superior art. The impairment was to taste, the taste of the supposedly cultivated fine art world, that part of the art globe that interested itself in current art. It came to be taken equally a matter of class that without knowing it you judged fine art past the class to which it belonged. If it didn't belong to the grade of the "new" or the "experimental" (I hate that give-and-take, experimental), if it wasn't new enough, if information technology wasn't new in a conspicuous, obvious fashion, it was to exist dismissed. John Russell in the New York Times, someone I respect a good deal personally but don't think much of him as a critic, would write about, permit'south say, Darby Bannard, and say "oh, he had this and he had this, but maybe he'due south repetitive, perhaps he'due south dated." Now datedness is not a valid artful judgment. It doesn't say whether art is expert or bad. Dated art tin be as proficient equally upward-to-engagement fine art. (There are qualifications there; but I won't go into them.) You can't dismiss a piece of work of art considering it's derivative. There may be a sure caste beyond which derivativeness does hurt fine art, simply derivativeness every bit such, doesn't, isn't crucial to the quality of a piece of work.
One more affair before I get back to true sense of taste: what struck me, maybe surprised me more than annihilation else in the audience for new art was its patience with boredom. Conceptual Art was an example of that, quasi-Conceptual art, some kinds of Minimal Art. And it was precisely that considering people were bored that they thought the stuff had something -- that it actually had something and they were missing information technology -- and the fact that information technology was there to be missed meant that it was real new and really important. If they got it, if they got the art, if they enjoyed it some, information technology was probably slick, information technology was probably facile and dated. Now, I'm not exaggerating hither; this is literally reporting things I've heard.
Only dorsum to true sense of taste. True gustation in any of the arts focuses on ane thing at a fourth dimension. It doesn't classify. It doesn't have a class or a genre or a species; it doesn't reject. Information technology looks at one affair at a time. Now I noticed long ago how people would fail to look at one thing at a time. A example of very uneven artists, and an artist who went in several unlike directions at once like Hans Hofmann. His fellow painters would come up in, take 1 glance at the show and dismiss information technology and say "well, if he's working in then many different directions he's non serious in any 1 of them and he's probably beingness in-fluenced all over the lot." And then forth. The same thing would happen with David Smith who was likewise. A very uneven, slap-up artist, too, and whose overinstalled shows would look like underbrush, the pieces going in so many different directions and also close to one another. You had to work to run across a Smith show, had to look at one thing at a fourth dimension isolated from the next just I noticed that at that place'due south a widespread reluctance to do that. Somebody'd walk in, look effectually and say, "oh, it'southward no adept." [That's what happened in those days when you couldn't] make head or tail out if it. After the early sixty's if you couldn't make head or tail out if it, it had to be good. Now, the business of the new for its own sake has erased distinctions of quality. I remember 20 years ago in London -- as long ago as that -- existence considered an one-time fashioned connoisseur considering I said there were practiced Pollocks and bad Pollocks and there were good Rothkos and bad Rothkos and already, at that time, the students at the Majestic Art College idea that was beside the point. Yous didn't look at art that way anymore and make discriminations of that sort. Yous bought Pollock in toto and you bought so and so in toto, or y'all rejected so and so in toto. Now, the failure to make distinctions of quality and the business of classifying, of experiencing art in terms of classes -- the new and the not new -- has also brought on, every bit you all know, a kind of permissiveness. I'm non saying anything peculiarly new, but some-thing that I don't recollect is repeated enough.
Now at that place's even a tendency to make art, especially in painting, that's ugly. I hateful deliberately ugly, which sounds like a contradiction in terms, but there's i artist named Malcolm Morley, he's an Englishman originally who lives over here now, who'due south a huge success with his oil paintings (his watercolors show he can pigment) which go for shocking prices. I'grand told his last bear witness just sold out. Morley hardly makes any basic near the fact that he'south trying to make ugly pictures, because that would top everything in the way of the new. Well, in a sense information technology does. As respectable a critic as Hilton Kramer has written that he thinks Morley probably the most important of the New Expressionists. The New Expressionists -- they're the latest success. By way of parenthesis, let me call to your notice the speed with which these trends displace one another. It's supposed to be because art moves faster now than information technology used to and that'south a fallacy, a misconception; it'due south not so. On the well-nigh superficial level, on the virtually con-spicuous level, fashions do succeed one some other faster than they used to. They jostle one another more closely. But that'south the level they're on. At whatsoever rate, Pattern Painting was supposed to exist the thing two years ago. You tin can read about information technology, you lot could tell past reports of the prices it brought, merely then, overnight, along came these Europeans, the Italians, Clemente, Chia, some Germans, Lupertz, Kiefer, Baselitz (I forget the other names), and [the Americans] Julian Schnabel, David Salle, and they push Blueprint Painting right out of the picture. All of sudden it'south straight painting for a modify: you no longer had to put three-dimensional elements into pictorial context to look new. This was straight painting. Pattern Painting went out overnight. The Italians, likewise wanting to be very advanced, introduced representation -- human figures etc. and at that place'south goose egg wrong with that -- but they were put in, you tin can tell they were put in because it was known that this was naughty. And the same with Schnabel, the same with Salle. At present, the Italians, in my opinion, don't paint and so well. I happen to think that Schnabel puts pigment on well, but there'due south more to making pictures than putting paint on well, in handling the medium. You lot too have to make a picture, which is the almost difficult thing, as it was for the old masters, equally it was for Pollock, equally information technology was for Mondrian, as it was for Newman -- putting a film together. That's not just a technical question; you don't have to know the inside of art in club to appreciate a unity, something that sticks together and something that doesn't. The Europeans and Schnabel and Salle and Morley suddenly don't have to make pictures. All they accept to do is put paint and maybe a little figuration on a rectangular surface or oval surface -- it doesn't affair. Schnabel puts crockery in his pictures or seashells or so forth, but that'south beside the point. ([It's possible to] make great art doing that, but the trouble with Schnabel is that when he puts crockery in, he ordinarily puts it in in an bookish way, following Pollock "all-over.")
The betoken is going back to straight painting to testify y'all don't have to make pictures anymore. I'd rather see preposterous sculpture every bit y'all meet and then frequently in the Whitney Biennials or in Soho. For me that's not as bad as seeing people paint without making pictures. I feel "good God," I could paint some; I wish I'd enjoyed that liberty. And then there wouldn't accept been any struggle when I tried to paint abstruse thirty years ago; I'd have simply put things together on a support. Now, it suffices that Schnabel and the Europeans, the New Expressionists, expect new -- and they are new; with all their academic elements they're new works of art I'd never seen. Now, [newness] is enough: people have said to me, "Information technology'due south something new. It'due south something new." [Today] that'due south what matters most.
Now fine art, the production of art, goes on in surprising ways, or surprising given the context. Ever since Manet's time, ever since the 1860's the new art that got attention beginning was junior art. Whatsoever painter or sculptor, or any writer for that matter as T. S. Eliot can prove, or any composer who went over fast, didn't last. (That'south an unconscious rhyme.) That's the record. I don't say it has to be that fashion, simply the tape is unbroken. And those who go over fast occupy the foreground of attention every bit far as current art is concerned. That'south been true since Manet's time, since the 1860's. Meanwhile, the best new art is at that place in the background, most behind the scenes. And that'south what the record says besides. We look back at the path and things tend to telescope into 1 some other. We retrieve that Picasso went over very fast and so along; butthat'due south not true. Degas said sometime in the late 1890'due south that "in our fourth dimension yous didn't succeed." Picasso could take said the same affair. And so could Matisse. So could Pollock. Then could Newman. And then could David Smith. So could Anthony Caro. In our time, significant by our fourth dimension earlier we were 40 or before we were 35 or earlier we were 50, in our time you didn't succeed; "Dan notre temp on north'arrive pas." That remains as true today equally ever. But art has its malice. That's one of the many things to relish about fine art. After the early 1960'southward, in that location was a full general resolve that we art lovers weren't going to repeat the mistakes of the by with regard to new and advanced art. We were going to run to greet it, as a matter of fact. Zero is going to be also new, too scandalous or also shocking for us non to take and, if we can beget it, purchase. That became the rule, I'd say, a rule that notwithstanding pertains. "I'yard not going to be an old fuddy duddy, I'm going to keep up with the newest thing. Considering of those 50 years of uninterrupted errors fabricated by the cultivated art world, from Manet's fourth dimension on; 60 years, more. No more! We're not going to exist caught out once more. If it'due south new plenty, information technology's good. And if it isn't new nosotros know information technology's academic, it's to exist discarded. We're not going to go for Bouguereau again. We're not going to become for Gerome again" -- skillful Lord, Gerome wasn't such a bad painter when he stayed small-scale. And now they know enough to reject the all-time new painting, art with its malice has contrived to brand the all-time new painting come up along rather softly. Information technology comes every bit straight painting, and so called. It comes forth as straight sculpture. Abstract, for the well-nigh part, yes, merely not always. Only it'southward coming, every bit it were, too stealthily. Information technology looks as well dated to people, like John Russell, who don't look hard enough. And then in that location's a lot, relatively, a lot of good new art being produced in our time, and past young people, besides. Curiously enough, amidst painters, an unusually high proportion of women. I'm not saying that as a sop to the feminists in the audience.
But as I indicated, art moves more than slowly than it used to. These fads and fashions are all in the foreground, they're not role of the lesser history of fine art as Manet and the Impressionists and the Mail service Im-pressionists and the Fauves and the Cubists and the Abstract Expressionists and the Stijlests were. No, these fads and fashions, these far-out things, they're part of the froth on pinnacle, the froth that'due south been with u.s. since the 1850's. And it's not as good barm every bit information technology used to be because then there were good painters like Gerome and Meisonnier or Landseer even and others, who at to the lowest degree when they stayed modest were good. No, the down underneath art periods change more slowly than they have at any fourth dimension since the 1820'southward. Principal trends, I don't like to use that word "main" correct now, but I mean all the same all that [it implies], have taken longer to wearable themselves out as the leading movements for ambitious, serious, younger artists. Abstract Expressionism lasted twenty years. Fauvism lasted 5. Cubism, a dozen years. The '60s have been with us for 22 years now, because I consider everything since Pop Fine art the '60s. Fine art at bottom, the all-time art, drags its feet, as it were. That's nothing confronting information technology, I mean that'south non a value judgement, just it drags its feet. The '60s are however with us! That isn't the most important thing I accept to say, but I'll conclude on that and welcome your questions.
Q: I would likew you to expand om your ideas of what is proficient fine art. Is art good in relationship to the societal context, and with that is dated art important because of its historical context? What is the relationship of proficient art as a universal, every bit a specific, in relation to private pieces of fine art in their societal context.
G: That question depends on a further question, of whether how can you tell the dif-ference between good and bad art. That's what information technology actually depends on. Nobody knows! I don't desire to be brusk with you, but I have to exist. That'south an unanswerable question Everybody has to acquire taste for himself. You don't learn taste from someone else, you don't learn it through advice. You lot just acquire gustatory modality through your own experience. By the same token, the difference betwixt skillful and bad in art, in any art, any medium, is non something that can be formularized, that can be defined, that can exist pointed to as a dominion that can be applied. So your question in the cease has to stay upwards in the air.
Q: How can you say that some art is good and some art is bad other than for your ain self? I prefer this or that slice of art. Now y'all were just saying a while ago that this painter was good when he stayed small, insinuating that he was bad when he got larger. Now, yous are making a judgement and I'd like to know why you can do it.
G: How I arrived at that? May I interrupt you lot, I'g going to audio rude. How do I arrive at the sentence? Through my gustatory modality which is intuitive and may be wrong. Simply as Kant said -- I have to quote him over and over again, he took care of these questions 200 odd years ago -- you can't demonstrate an artful judgement the manner you can demonstrate that ii plus two equals 4, or a scientific suggestion. You can't verify it, because taste is subjective. Simply every bit Kant said again, though he didn't solve this I don't think, it'southward also intersubjective. That's i of those polysyllabic words I don't like either, merely I can't notice a better 1. Somehow there's an amazing amount of agreement over the form of time virtually the skilful and the bad. It'due south amazing, given how subjective taste seems to be. Nosotros all agree (I'll bring Raphael'due south name in once again) that if y'all tin't see how adept Raphael is when he is skillful, you lot can't run across painting. I'll go further, and this is going to audio as though I'm patting myself on the back, but it's the instance I accept closest to hand. When I was in Nippon I got far more than interested in their sometime fine art than in their new. I made a bespeak of seeing as much of the older Japanese art every bit I could as I went around Japan and then checked [what I liked against] what the Japanese thought. Now, when it came to gimmicky Japanese fine art, recent fine art, we didn't get anywhere, but it came to the older masters [there was] a surprising amount of understanding. Hither was I, a Westerner, coming to a country I'd never been to before, not knowing the linguistic communication and yet -- and here I'm patting myself on the back -- being able to discriminate between the good and bad, to their surprise. And no, I didn't set it up for myself, by saying "I like so and and then and then and then;" that would take defeated my purpose. I asked them what they idea of so and so, what they thought of (likely Hasegawa Tohaku) or (likely Nonomura Sotatsu) and what they thought of medieval Japanese and then forth. I had a similar experience in India a twelvemonth later -- the fact that some of the very best Indian sculptures, the Hindu sculpture done between the 13th and 15th centuries, no, the 12 and 15th centuries in Southern Bharat. Well sure, the connoisseurs of Indian art knew that, but I institute it out for myself. I wasn't surprised at the agreement, just it did evidence me something, that the cultural barriers in certain arts aren't that formidable. Now at that place are all sorts of arguments: How can yous get at information technology? Yous don't know the social context; y'all don't know the religious context; you don't know the cultural and so forth. I don't care! We go and look at Paleolithic painting in Due south of France and in North of Spain and nosotros run across there some damn practiced painting. (They don't make pictures, by the style, they just make images.) In that location'south some damn proficient painting on those walls. And I don't have to have been a Cro-Magnon to know, or to know anything about the Cro-Magnons to appreciate them. And many other people don't. Now that'south a fact of experience. The questions you lot ask are unanswerable, really. Marx, who'southward responsible for a lot of these mistaken questions, himself knew better. Marx laid off art. He said his ideas had nothing to exercise with art. He was a sucker for Ancient Greek art, the worst as well as the all-time, but that was beside the betoken. The questions are unanswerable. Yous know sometimes you can relish unanswerable questions. And there'southward nothing mystic about it, either, or mystical. That's the best answer I can brand to your question. And if you're interested enough, read Kant'southward Critique of Judgement and so read Croce. If you're interested enough, read Croce's Aesthetics. You'll see far better minds than mine wrestle with these questions and come with no good answers.
Q: Do you recollect that the succession of pop movements in visual arts that have occurred since the late 50's have been generally an reward to all of the states to develop our tastes, or in full general, a disadvantage?
G: I don't call back it's been an advantage in any way except as i. As my daughter -- who'southward at college now and hadn't been peculiarly interested in art, hitherto, or non until the last 2 or three years -- said, art has become chic now. That's why there are 100 students in her art survey form. That'southward why down at Duke in that location are 300 students in an art survey course. 200 freshmen, yous know. And that'southward virtually all I can see. Art's become lively, in a sense. It doesn't require much awarding to, I won't say enjoy, but to go titillated by information technology. But otherwise, I think that taste, in general -- cultivated taste, I'm talking about, not talking the gustatory modality of the majority who don't care about visual art, who care generally nearly popular music, which is no criticism -- I don't call back that the cultivated taste for electric current new art has improved. I retrieve on the opposite, that it has deteriorated. Lamentable fact and I'grand embarrassed by it because ever since I was sometime enough to write, go printed, and so forth, I would like to think that things accept gone down hill. It was then the right mental attitude to have if y'all wanted to be highbrow. It's a paradoxical situation because, every bit Berenson observed in a monograph on the Arch of Constantine which was put upward in Rome in the 4th century Advertizing, it was recognized at that time that contemporary sculptors couldn't match the quality of sculptors of the past. And how did that recognition beguile itself? Because they had to strip some reliefs off the Cavalcade of Tragan and stick it up on that arch. This is an example of where taste stayed alive only the product of art, the production of sculpture anyway, I won't say that information technology's truthful of painting, went downhill. You would think [the production of] art were dependent on taste. Now Berenson, along with many others, said Graeco-Roman fine art went downhill considering information technology was corrupted by Oriental influence and then along. I say that if Oriental influence, so called corrupting Oriental influence, could penetrate Greek or Roman culture that way, at that place was something wrong with the culture, with the art; it was vulnerable. At present in our time, I think taste sinks monumentally, but I don't see art failing: the art in the background, the fine art that doesn't sell so much, that doesn't get much notice in the art press. What will be the outcome of this paradox, I don't know. You never predict, when information technology comes to fine art anyhow. That's another wonderful thing about fine art: y'all tin't predict where the next skillful art'southward coming from, and I like that.
Q: I was wondering if the increased access to advice, to data, through the new developments in communication just recently, will hinder or help the development of sense of taste in general?
Yard: Well, no, it shouldn't necessarily help; it shouldn't necessarily hurt; in itself information technology'south a neutral cistron. I see information technology as a negative factor in so far every bit trends spread worldwide likewise fast nowadays. You tin can see information technology hither in student piece of work at Western Michigan, from the art magazines. People didn't read art magazines that much 25 years ago You may not know that. And even when they read them, they didn't pay that much attention to them. That's changed considerably over the final 25 years and I've gone to whatever colleges, whatever universities, student courses, so forth, since the early 60's. I've seen the latest New York trends catching on immediately, beingness repeated immediately in the work of undergraduates. I noticed the same thing in Europe where they have their own art magazines. And to that extent I think the speed of communications has been a negative factor. It's hurt more than than it's helped. But in itself, it's neutral. I think that, also this has something to practise with the crisis in art didactics, because you know since the triumph of abstract painting, since the existent time of modernism, the sometime curricula have gone out. Students [in the by were] not supposed to express themselves; they learned to draw from life or from still lifes, or even how to handle paint, though that'south not so tough. Art isn't taught like that anymore and and so they, people who devise art curricula, are at a loss. This isn't true everywhere, simply it's true most places. And, so you lot allow the students express themselves. Abstruse Expressionism did a lot of damage in that respect. And and then off they go chasing the latest trends. What practice y'all expect young people to do? I can come across myself in college doing the same matter. I can see myself at the Art Students' League, which I attended, doing the same matter, with things the mode they are at present
Q: Practise you think perhaps a moderation tin can be instilled, or some kind of a style of projecting the thought that yous tin take stuff with a grain of salt, or a chunk of salt could that be a solution?
G: In the hands of a forceful enough instructor, maybe. It would depend on the person, I adventure. Maybe -- and I say maybe. But now, I oasis't taught art -- oh, I did for six weeks at Black Mountain, but at that place weren't undergraduates there anyhow. Information technology would take a forceful grapheme, one that got a lot of respect, to turn immature people away from what they saw going over around them. Allow me add to that: I think it's very difficult for an aspiring artist -- or for any visual creative person, cause I don't think visual fine art reproduces well enough no matter what -- to accept some contact with a place where a lot of art is shown, a lot of current art and old fine art too. And in this state that ways New York; in France it means Paris; in England, London. Germany is different, they've got several centers. Just what I saw happen in New York in the latter 50'southward when the avant-garde really won, after '55 when Abstract Expressionism triumphed, ever and so many immature artists, nigh of them from outside New York coming, and succumbing to the general trend because they were too young to stand up alone. I think New York destroyed artists. I retrieve it however does. My advice would be to live about l to 100 miles away from New York, if you can have information technology, and come to New York often enough to see non simply the best of current art just to encounter the kind of art you don't want to brand too. And that's important, to encounter what you don't want to do even though yous know it'south going over.
Q: Your case, or the case, for an individual , personal aesthetic, is beauteous and certainly needed, but information technology raises 2 questions to my mind. I of them would be that your name has been associated, oft for the wrong reasons, sometimes, perhaps, for the right reasons, with a system called formalism. And the 2nd one existence that you accept been accused in the past by various people of a tyranny or exercise of a tyranny of taste. Could y'all address yourself to both of those?
Thousand: Most formalism. Formalism was originally the name of a Russian fine art and literary movement before the First World War. And and so information technology became used past the Bolsheviks (Communists is a dirty word) for any kind of fine art that was for its own sake. It became a dirty word like "art for art's sake," which is a valid notion. Quondam in the '50's the give-and-take ceremonial came upwards again in the mouths and at the pens of people I dare to call middlebrow. And then, it's true, I was fabricated responsible for it, though I wasn't the merely one, and past one of these easy inferences that plague human thought, information technology was held that I advocated a certain style of painting. At present, I oasis't written a discussion in favor of a certain kind of painting that hasn't been made still. Y'all only write well-nigh fine art that's already been made. My prejudice, as Professor Link says, is towards representational painting, and information technology'south the only kind I tin can do, only I had to have the fact that the major painting of our fourth dimension, and the major sculpture too, after a while, was abstract, because you can't choose what to like and what non to like. I say major because the departure between major and pocket-sized is very of import. It became very of import for this state in the '40s when the Abstract Expressionists finally decided they could compete with the French and stop being in tutelage. Only my rhetoric wasn't very careful, otherwise I couldn't take been misunderstood to the extent I have been. I recognize that and I don't put the blame entirely on the people who misunderstood me. Though I still say I oasis't written a word that gives you lot reason to think that I'one thousand for abstract art, as such, every bit against other kinds of art. I wrote a slice called "Modernist Painting" that got taken as a program when it was only a description, and I was thought to believe in things that I was describing [as a program]. Once more, it was the fault of my rhetoric. I was in favor of "pure" fine art in spite of the fact that I put quotation marks effectually "pure" or "purity" whenever I used them, because I don't believe at that place'southward any such affair equally pure art. It was an illusion. Information technology was a necessary illusion, plainly, for modernist artists and information technology helped produce some corking art and some keen poesy. A necessary illusion for Mallarmé, say, and for Valery, and maybe even for Ezra Pound. It was a necessary illusion for Picasso and for Cézanne. There is no such affair as pure art, or pure poesy, or pure music. Anyway I don't believe there is such a thing. But I made the mistake of contenting myself with quotation marks and not maxim "wait, I don't believe this as a programme, I'm just describing." And then people causeless that was my program. I'd been describing what I idea had happened under modernism, and nothing more than and zip less. It was too inferred that I had said in that location was some necessity working in this although I said nothing to that event. Only I blame myself. I should accept been more careful.
Every bit far as existence a tyrant, skillful Lord, people I don't run into what evidence there is for that argument. I don't assign Pollock's success to me. A lot of expert my praise did for him he still had to sweat out his ten years and was badly off for money and for attending, anyhow. And the so-called "colour field painters" -- that's a label I hate -- I didn't praise them in print all that much, nor did they go over all that fast. That's an illusion, some other telescoping of the past. They sweated their fourth dimension out and nothing I said, nothing I did or could do, could have speeded their success. Just that is, well I'll use the word illusion once more. That's an illusion. If I were tyrannizing over taste someone similar Olitski or Bannard would accept been recognized as 2 of the best painters of the time. Olitski would exist recognized for the painter where painting is at. when I say "where painting is at" I don't mean that he towers in a higher place everybody else, no. But his reputation is not up. He does make a living; that's the big difference now since '55 when inflation started. Young, serious artists, aspiring artists had to struggle much harder economically dorsum in the '30's, forty's, virtually of the 50's, than they have since. I guess I make the general art boom responsible for that, but the general art boom is responsible for those fantastic prices that Professor Link mentioned young artists were getting present. Tyrannize over sense of taste, you know, you practise similar to be listened to and you lot practice similar to accept people agree with y'all, in your judgements, but if there's one affair that doesn't get with fine art or any of the arts, it's ability: they don't mix. And anybody who cozies themselves with the idea of having power is deluding themselves and is in for sad disappointment. I know one such person. He'south expressionless now. And there's the Latin saying "Don't speak ill of the dead" and it's -- and I'm speaking and I'm being personal and he was a gentleman I much admired in some ways and some other ways didn't. That's Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art. Y'all all know who he is. Mr. Barr quite evidently thought he could lead art and he found out he couldn't. I said before, you don't talk or write about art that hasn't been made yet. By the same token you are not for a class of art that'south still open, if you know what I mean. Here's what I mean. Mr. Barr decided, in 1939 or 40, I forget, that the American Abstract Artists group I don't know whether you know who they are, they kept abstract going a practiced deal in New York in the 30'due south while not producing much good abstract fine art themselves. They held annual shows and '30 or '40 they went to Mr. Barr and asked whether they could have infinite at the Museum of Modern Art for their next almanac. And he said, regretfully no, because he didn't think art was going in their direction. He thought -- that was the time neo-romantics were up and nobody hither except someone as old as myself remembers the neo-romantics; Christian Berard, not a bad painter, a Frenchman, Leona Berman, and they were painting from nature. Berard was a good painter, incidentally, and he'south unjustly forgotten -- and Mr. Barr said he thought, he didn't say it at that time, he said it on some other occasion, he thought that was the manner fine art was going now. At present, I think, whether he was right or incorrect, in turning downwards the triple A, I won't say. Op Art, and Anuszkiewicz, you all know what Op Fine art is, don't yous? In effect, he tried to put it over. Well, it didn't final long and I thought from his whole attitude -- I knew him personally and I'd meet him from time to time -- that he was being arrogant and he ended upward disappointed. Yous let an artist lead. No critic or museum person leads art. Art goes its own fashion and in one case again, I say, if you lot call back you have power you're sadly deluded. Where do I want to see art go? I want to see fine art go dorsum to the kind of realism that a small Impressionist, similar Caillebotte practiced or that Fantin Latour practiced in his notwithstanding lifes, not in his effigy compositions. But information technology's very unlikely information technology will go that way, but I'd be overjoyed to see major art go that mode. And I'thousand talking near major art. There's always been good small art and at that place still is, and it'south not to be sneezed at. But the outcome in New York in the 40's, and I keep harping on it, was, are we going to make major fine art or not? That was the issue for Pollock. That was the issue for Rothko. It became the outcome for DeKooning and Gorky. We're going to exist major artists. We're non going to be small. We're non going to be but American minor artists anymore. We're not going to be content with the lot of a painter as proficient as Eakins. And you know how proficient a painter Eakins was. But he still is unknown in Europe for all applied purposes, whereas Pollock became known worldwide. That doesn't say necessarily how proficient he was, but I retrieve there's justice in that and information technology'd brand me grin when I become abroad, and people would mention Warhol's name, or Andrew Wyeth and I would say they both flew overseas on Pollock's wings. Non that they were in Pollock's class, though I don't think Andrew Wyeth'south such a bad painter. I think he's better than Rauschenberg anyhow, and many other contempo celebrities.
Q: Would you say something nearly Pablo Picasso?
Thousand: Something nearly Picasso? You'll have to be more specific than that, sir.
Q: How virtually an anecdote?
One thousand: I never met him.
Q: What do you think of his stuff?
K: Oh, he was a very keen artist when he had information technology. And he stopped having it nigh 1926 and he had it somewhat until about 1940 and then I recall he lost it except here and in that location in sculpture and he was always a good draftsman, a good printmaker. I think he stayed a expert draftsman, a good printer, until the end of his life. Only equally a painter he went downhill after '26. That'south my opinion.
Q: I was wondering, what was Pollock like every bit a person? The just thing that someone my historic period knows is from reading biographies or something similar that. I was merely wondering what he was similar as a person and as a painter.
Yard: It gives me satisfaction to respond that question. When Pollock was sober he was one of the nicest homo beings on earth. Ane of the gentlest, too. When he was drunk, he changed, he changed personality. He was the virtually radical alcoholic I accept e'er had first paw contact with. He became Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jeckel. He never painted when he was drunk... But in the last year of his life when he was going to a psychoanalyst in New York, he had to come up into New York from East Hampton, and like all of the other artists of his generation, not knowing what the devil to practise with themselves, the most famous also as the well-nigh obscure, went straight to the Cedar Street Tavern. There he'd become himself roaring drunk and that's the Pollock who became known to most people. The drunken Pollock, who flirted with violence, as far as I know, struck a person only in one case in his whole life, and then, y'all know, in a peculiar, irrational way, and didn't hitting him very difficult either. I think one of you may know Ruben Kadish, one of Pollock's best friends; out of the blueish, Pollock hit him once outside the Cedar Street Tavern and so immediately embraced him, said he was sorry. This is the simply time, and here'southward this fellow known as a brawling, noisy he got struck at times because people mistook him, they thought he was about to hit them. It couldn't have been a bigger joke. But, sober Pollock, that was the real Pollock and by the way, he was a tutored and sophisticated artist. He had a better eye than deKooning and even Gorky, in my book. And he knew the by, though, he did one matter in one case, that didn't shock me, just sort of he was looking at a book of reproductions of Rubens landscapes, and he snapped it shut, threw it down on the floor, and said we tin do ameliorate present. Well, I said, become ahead, that'due south all. I thought well, he better... Now the curious matter here is there must be virtually ten or twelve Ruben landscapes extant. Are there more? I think at that place were just well-nigh that many reproduced in the book and when I saw them in the flesh I found I liked only two of them; that that wasn't Ruben's matter. But that isn't why Pollock said this. Pollock said this out of a certain impatience. I don't know It wasn't an impatience with the past. He wouldn't become to museums in the final 20 years of his life but then I noticed Morris Louis wouldn't either. Morris Louis would bulldoze me up to the door of the National Gallery in Washington and then say goodbye. Only Louis knew why he didn't want to get in, he said why, he said if he got in there he'd become infected past the old masters, that all that syrup would creep into him and information technology would creep in considering it was such wonderful syrup. Well, I guess that'south it.
Q: You stated that decorative blueprint art had terminated every bit a pop fine art grade at least a year ago.
G: Every bit a trend, as a tendency.
Q: As a trend, correct. I was wondering, in your view, where and when did it have its origin.
Thou: Damn! I should know, but I don't know where Decorative Pattern Painting started. I know that there'due south a daughter named Joyce Kozloff who was showing these awful paintings at Tibor de Nagy Gallery. And I'm surprised that anyone took them seriously. Simply and then, a year afterwards, she was office of this, this wave, and you lot could e'er tell about a wave when German fine art dealers came over and asked for Pattern Painting, Decorative. Information technology went on for most two years and it's only within the last 18 months that it'due south been pushed out of the limelight. I wouldn't say that it terminated, simply it's no longer the trend, no longer the going thing.
Q: Do you think it has any hope for revival?
Yard: Did everybody hear--does it have any promise for revival? I can't say.
Q: Can you lot predict?
Yard: I don't predict!
Q: Do yous consider photography, like commercial photography, fashion photography, equally fine art?
Thou: It can exist. When photography's good, let me put it that style, it's as practiced equally painting. That'due south all I can say and I've seen some photographs that are cracking, and that'southward why I say information technology. Just I don't put information technology on a lower level, no. But you lot don't do that with art anyhow, see? You don't, I don't take too much interest in prints for reasons of convenience. We tin can't pay attention to everything. But I wouldn't assume to say prints have a, are on a lower level than painting You lot don't say things similar that. Croce already pointed that out. And some of Rembrandt'southward late prints are better than a lot of his belatedly paintings. There you are. One last question and that'due south all.
Q: I must say that I disagree with you lot on the point that y'all say gustation is called instinct.
G: Intuition! I didn't say instinct. I experience information technology's learned.
Q: And you so stated in a couple points in your speech, that in giving it characteristics of being learned, past maxim that information technology adult when cultivated.
G: Oh yeah! I think that clears up some of the ideas that people inquire questions virtually good and bad fine art; that there is such a affair. I recall it's often confused with popular art and that's the reason people like "good" and "bad." Miss, I didn't say that taste couldn't exist developed!
Q: I said that development is giving information technology characteristics of being learned and (interrupted by G.)
G: The give-and-take evolution, yeah, yous're right, you're quite right, it overlaps with the meaning of learned. Just, so I should have been more careful. I should accept said taste tin can't be communicated. Yous have to learn it for your-self, Okay? I didn't like the word "learned" in that context. I prefer developed, or caused. Learning means likewise much, listening to someone else. That's why I avoided the word. Otherwise I concur with you. And think, it'southward intuition, not instinct, that'south involved. Well, I'm non in a hurry, I'm not looking at my sentinel for that reason, but I guess in that location should be one concluding question. (laughter)
Q: Is Mark Rothko a major painter?
Thousand: Yeah. (laughter, applause) Cheers. He did. Okay, I judge that's it, huh? Though he lost his stuff subsequently 1955. Okay. (applause)
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