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Art Czar
The Rise and Fall of Clement Greenberg
Synopsis
Clement Greenberg (1909-94) dominated the American art scene, and is still considered the most influential American art critic of the twentieth century. He was a major champion of Abstract Expressionism, discovering and promoting Jackson Pollock, was central to the establishment of New York as the hub of the western art world in the post-war period, and set the tone for art criticism for half a century to come. Drawing on previously unpublished documents, interviews and archives, historian and journalist Alice Goldfarb Marquis tells the fascinating story of the rise and fall of the Art Czar: his development from a small voice published in periodicals of marginal circulation, to a towering figure whose views influenced artists and their dealers, museums and their public, worldwide; and his fall from his lofty perch as he failed to adjust his views on abstract art of the 1940s and 1950s to contemporary taste of the 1960s and beyond. Greenberg continues to be relevant in the world of art because he offers a thoughtful alternative to the ironic culture of Postmodernism.
His essays are still frequently reprinted as exemplifying a certain type of modernist criticism, and his seminal essay "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" (1939) continues to be widely quoted and analysed. This book is the first to place his achievements and failings in the context of the social and cultural history of 20th-century America.
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What Reviewers Are Saying
'A rigorously researched and cogent account of the critic's life-the first, in fact, that is intelligent and evenhanded enough to accompany the four volumes of his collected critical writings...Her extensive use of unpublished sources sets her narrative apart from, and above, the only other Greenberg biography...What really distinguishes Marquis's book is her adept portrayal of the critic's professional development and eventual decline within a complex mid-century network of people and institutions...A formidable job'- Bookforum 'Bracing... Ms. Marquis has produced a biography that reads more like a novel, one that will no doubt excite and unnerve many readers... What comes through in this biography is Greenberg's intellectual complexity... [Marquis's] biography is a benchmark for discussions of the life and legacy of Clement Greenberg.'- Wall Street Journal 'Smart, lively, thorough...This volume will fascinate.'- Publishers Weekly 'Compelling...An especially relevant story for today, when questions of style and aesthetic judgments increasingly shape myriad industries and personal lifestyle choices.'- DNR '...a rigourously researched and cogent account of the critic's life - the first, in fact, that is intelligent and evenhanded enough to accompany the four volumes of his collected critical writings... a formidable job... The extensive use of unpublished sources sets her narrative appart from, and above, the other Greenberg biography... But what really distinguashes MArquis's book is her adept portrayal of the critic's professional development and eventual decline within a complex midcentury network of people and institutions in New York.' Bookforum, Apr/May 06 'A rich, incisive, and even-handed portrait of this groundbreaking arbiter of aesthetics.' - Art & Antiques 'As well as outlining Greenberg's life and commenting shrewdly no several of his relationships, Marquis also provides a sort of meditation on what criticism can and should be...The question of what happens to the prophet of the new when something even newer threatens to turn him into an elegist is never less than sensitively handled.' - Times Literary Supplement 'Fascinating.' - John Russell, New Criterion '...is a good introduction to those who are unfamiliar with the life and work of one of the 20th century's most brilliant critics.' The Art Newspaper. 'There is much to admire in this book, particularly in terms of the wealth of newly published detail, and in the often sharp observation.' State of Art