Clement
Greenberg
'The Present Prospects of
American Painting and Sculpture,' Horizon (London),
nos. 93-94, October 1947,pp.25,26,27,29, 30.
reprinted
in 'The World Of Art Library •
General'
Maurice Tuchman, 'The New York School, Abstract Expressionism in
the 40s and 50s'
© Thames & Hudson Ltd, London
ISBN 0-500-18112-8 - clothbound
ISBN 0-500-20106-4 - paperbound
The
morale of that section of New York's Bohemia which is inhabited by
striving young artists has declined in the last twenty years, but
the level of its intelligence has risen, and it is still downtown,
below 34th Street, that the fate of American art is being decided
- by young people, few of them over forty, who live in cold-water
flats and exist from hand to mouth. Now they all paint in the
abstract vein, show rarely on 57th Street, and have no reputations
that extend beyond a small circle of fanatics, art-fixated misfits
who are as isolated in the United States as if they were living in
the Palaeolithic Europe. Most of the young artists in question
have either been students of Hans Hoffmann or come in close
contact with his students and ideas.
What we have
... is the ferocious struggle to be a genius, which involves the
artists downtown even more than the others. The foreseeable result
will be a collection of peintres maudits - who are already
replacing the počtes maudits in Greenwich Village. Alas,
the future of American art depends on them. That it should is
fitting but sad. Their isolation is inconceivable, crushing,
unbroken, damning. That anyone can produce art on a respectable
level in this situation is highly improbable. What can fifty do
against a hundred and forty million?
page
2 of Greenberg's critiques
