Clement Greenberg: His Life and theory in Art_2

The Final Exit to Reach for the Art

 

 Clement Greenberg at 100, Harvard University

 

Avant-Garde Art and‘ Flatness’
What is ‘avant-garde art?’and what is ‘flatness?’And then
what is the relationship between‘ avant-garde art’and‘ flatness’?

If we look at this Greenberg’s citation we can get a better
understanding of his notion of“ flatness and avant-grade art.”

“The arts, then, have been hunted back to their mediums, and there
they have been isolated, concentrated, and defined. It is very virtue of
its medium that each art is unique and strictly itself. To restore the
identity of art the opacity of its medium must be emphasized. For the
visual arts the medium is discovered to be physical; hence pure painting
and pure sculpture seek above all else to affect the spectator physically…
The history of avant-garde painting is that of a progressive
surrender to the resistance of its medium; which resistance consists
chiefly in the flat picture plane’s denial of efforts to‘ hole through’it
for realistic perspectival space…”14)

In my view, there are two main criteria for Greenberg’s definition
of avant-garde art. These are ‘Originality (Creativity)’and
‘Flatness.’Avant-garde artists should achieve their ‘originality’
through ‘self-criticism’because originality is the most important

point of distinction from kitsch. Through the process
of ‘self-criticism’and through creating one’s own
‘originality or creativity’one should achieve the final
goal of avant-garde art ? ‘flatness.’Flatness could
also mean the ‘truth’in Greenberg’s theory in art.
And therefore ‘autonomous or absolute freedom of
art’should exist as a pre-condition, departing from all
ideologies, and social and political conditions to reach
‘purity of art’or‘ pure art form.’

As we can see ‘avant-garde art’is ongoing
process of a developing art form in the realm of ‘flatness.’
This also means avant-garde art is a kind of revolutionary
and challenging artistic action from the past
academism and mass, commercial art. If so, why dose
Greenberg regard the flatness as a goal of avant-garde
art? The answer is somewhat ambiguous to me.
However, I propose that to answer this question we
should analyze Greenberg’s judgment on Courbet’s
paintings. Greenberg considers Courbet as the first
avant-garde artist. According to Greenberg, Courbet’s
painting starts to show the notion of new flatness he

obsessed. Greenberg, hence, naturally becomes to focus much
more on the aspect of flatness as an evolutionary form of art.
Recovering the aspect of flatness, according to Greenberg, is fundamentally
to recover the originality of art form which was a predominant
in our classical art such as Gothic and Byzantine art?
back to the tradition or traditional art form.

As an Art Critic (1950s - 1994)
After the form of avant-garde art was completed by the cubist
artists, it was followed by the Abstract-ｅxpressionist artists such as
Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and so forth.15)

As I mentioned briefly in my introduction, Greenberg modified
his notion of avant -garde art in his article, “The Plight of
Culture.”As American economic conditions improved, the highmiddle
class was booming especially from 1940 to 1945. In his
original version of “avant-garde and kitsch”, he used a way of
dichotomy such as avant-garde versus kitsch, and the Elite versus
the masses. However, because of the emergence of the new social
class - middle class - this theory could not be maintained.
Greenberg was forced to develop and to extend his theory of art. In
that article, Greenberg replaces the terminology ‘avant-garde’by

‘highbrow art or culture,’and ‘kitsch’was replaced
by ‘lowbrow art.’And he adds the new terminology,
‘middlebrow.’

The middlebrow was the new social class and culture
after the Second World War and represented a
somewhat ambiguous position between social classes.
According to Greenberg, the middlebrow culture
threatened the status of the highbrow. It makes the
highbrow culture mediocre and in the process the middlebrow
replaces the standard of the highbrow culture
with the standard of the market place - the aspect of
kitsch.16) I do not wish to go further on this issue but
mention that Greenberg warned of the hazard of the
middlebrow culture at the time and tried to make an
effort to sustain the highbrow culture (avant-garde culture)
as a high cultural form.(Elite culture)

From this period (1953s) to his death in 1994
Greenberg had worked as an apolitical art critic physically.
But I would like to point out that even though
Greenberg modified his original notion of avant-garde

he continued to maintain his notion of avant-garde as a high art
and cultural form.

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