1st posting Modernist Painting Clement Greenberg/Peter Selz

1st posting Greenberg Moderism / Selz Gestural Abstract

Modernism used art to call attention to art, and Clement Greenberg was an influential American art critic closely associated with Modern art in the United States. In particular, he promoted the abstract expressionist movement. Greenberg emphasized the self-criticism of Modernism grows out of, but not the same thing as, the criticism of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment criticized from the outside, the way criticism in its accepted sense does; Modernism criticizes from the inside, through the procedures themselves of that which is being criticized. Greenberg believed that “modern paintings produced self criticism”. Greenberg shown this to be true when he expressed that modernism is in fact an extension of traditional painting, flatness was significant in it own right. The task of self-criticism became to eliminate from the specific effects of each art any and every effect that might conceivably be borrowed from or by the medium of any other art. Thus would each art being rendered “pure”, and in its “purity” find the guarantee of its standard of quality as well as its independence. “Purity” meant self-definition, and the enterprise of self-criticism in the arts became one of self-definition with a vengeance.
Modernism under these same limitations came to be regarded as positive factors, and was acknowledged openly, Manet’s became the first Modernist pictures by virtue of the frankness with which they declared the flat surfaces on which they were painted. The impressionists in Manet’s wake, abjured underpainting and glazes, to leave the eye under no doubt as to the fact that the colors they used were made of paint that came from tubes or pots, Edouard Manet’s “Berthe Morisot with a Fan, 1872”. Paul Cezanne had an entirely new vivid sense relating to flatness as in “Still life with plaster cupid, 1895”. Cezanne sacrificed verisimilitude, or correctness, in order to fit his drawing and design more explicitly into the rectangular shape of the canvas. It was the stressing of the flatness of the surface that remained. Flatness alone was unique and exclusive to pictorial art.
There are so many artists that follow many different ways from different generations of inspiration such as Helen Frankenthaler, belonging to the second generation of abstract expressionists, was impressed by Pollock’s technique of pouring paint directly onto the canvas and originated a stain-painting technique by causing light-colored pigments to flow directly onto primed canvas, integrating color and support in a single unit. Her flat surfaces and stain method and her alliance with Clement Greenberg’s formalist theories and advocacy of what the critic called “post-painterly abstraction” established her as the antecedent of color-field painting. Although all of these artist have different interpreted styles and genres of artistry they all come together at a happy medium, what I mean is that they all have different descriptions of what they consider to be Modernist or criticizing artistry, it still leads to the expression of the artist in an abstract way, the artistry tells the story. The criticism was just that of what the painting, or the flatness of the objective being created showed.
There was a physician turned painter by the name of Alberto Burri, who made paintings out of tattered sacks to which he applied trickles of red paint, recalling the blood-stained bandages of war victims. He worked with a great variety of materials: burned wooden sheets, industrial plastics, and battered tin plates. Although these items weren’t of paint, they still told a story just as all the other artists mentioned earlier. In conclusion Modernist Painting/Criticism and Gestural Abstract are one in the same, what ever the artist has created speaks for itself, not necessarily the personal opinion of the artist. I found this statement to be true “both traditional and new structures are no longer valid” when an artist takes a risk and assume responsibility for the works done and allow them to just be “justified”, then Modernism/ Criticism and Gestural Abstract will merely be a term of endearment.