Clem's Folly
Like something stuck to the bottom of your shoe, an idea can be hard to shake once it takes hold. Those unfamiliar with Clement Greenberg might be surprised by the impact the writing of one man can have on the art world. Keep in mind we can still see the consequences of the sophistries and utopian fantasies of a certain nineteenth century freeloader today. In fact, the influence that said freeloader had on Greenberg is immediately apparent in the reading of Greenberg’s most well known essay: Avant-garde and Kitsch. This 1939 essay originally published in the Partisan Review is probably the most read, most discussed and most reacted to polemic a work of art criticism has ever had. Though today it has been tossed aside for more esoteric, gordian theory, I can’t imagine anything that has had anywhere close to his impact and monopoly on young artistic minds.
Picasso vs Sargent, Norman Rockwell. 1966
Avant-garde and Kitsch employs one of the the most simple and most effective devices available to a polemicist, that is to say: establish a binary and manufacture a Manichean oppositional relationship within this binary. There is the good, the avant-garde; and the bad, kitsch. Kitsch is a term borrowed from the German meaning low art (or as Greenberg calls it “ersatz culture”). Greenberg postulates that the industrial age gave birth to kitsch as peasants moved into cities, and were afforded time and money to enjoy a culture outside the “rude” “folk” art they once had. A “synthetic culture” lacking in the rigor and quality of high-art was created to cater to these peasants. To Greenberg, kitsch is everything that good art isn’t. It's simple; it makes its viewers feel things; it is realistic. Greenberg uses Hollywood movies, Tin Pan Alley songs, and the New Yorker Magazine as examples of kitsch. The ignorant peasant can’t help but enjoy this stuff. The condescension is dripping off the pages.
Barge Haulers on the Volga, Ilya Repin. 1870-73
As an illustration, Greenberg creates a narrative of a hypothetical Russian peasant being presented with two paintings: one Picasso and the other a battle scene by Ilya Repin:
“But things being as they are in Russia - and everywhere else - the peasant soon finds that the necessity of working hard all day for his living and the rude, uncomfortable circumstances in which he lives do not allow him enough leisure, energy and comfort to train for the enjoyment of Picasso.”
So the peasant is too ignorant and too tired from his labors to invest the energy and intelligence required to become a “cultivated spectator” so instead he prefers the Repin. The art is easily digested for such a benighted viewer. The Repin also entices with its realism.
“That Repin can paint so realistically that identifications are self-evident immediately and without any effort on the part of the spectator - that is miraculous. The peasant is also pleased by the wealth of self-evident meanings which he finds in the picture: ‘it tells a story.’”
I wasn’t familiar with the name Repin when I first read Greenberg's essay in college. I just took Greenberg's word for it that this was art that I shouldn’t, as a sophisticated person, indulge in… what would be next, Norman Rockwell (seemingly the deepest pit of Greenberg’s kitsches)? Since my collegiate cultivation, I have come to admire the work of the Russian realist. And it was for many of the reasons that Greenberg found so offensive.
Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, Ilya Repin. 1885
Repin’s paintings do tell a story, and some are quite dramatic, but nothing more maudlin than the Blue Period paintings. A cultivated spectacular would call what Repin excels at as pathos. Of course Repin paints quite realistically (but not more so than, say, Degas). For this reason he is often lumped in with the Soviet realist painters (the ones who painted happy peasants gathering wheat), despite the fact that Repin predates the revolution. Of course, none of this matters to people like myself who believe that the proof of the pudding is not the hermeneutical and Societal critique. Repin’s paintings are effective and it would seem that is their biggest sin for Greenberg, and others who followed in his wake.
The Svengali-like dominance of the New York art world eventually came to an end. After his fall from grace, there was a backlash to Greenberg and his theories - it would seem the proponent of the avant-garde had himself become retrograde. The elevation of kitsch became a go-to subversive device by artists like Roy Lichtenstein (who, I believe, was sincere in his admiration of comics) and Jeff Koons (whose irony never transgressed that of an impudent adolescent). This reactionary conduct of mockery only serves to reify the underlying premise: there is an avant-garde/ kitsch duality. I dismiss the entire argument. An educated person can like Repin and hate Picasso or enjoy both. The false dichotomy is an inane academic device used to reduce infinitely complex subjects into publishable typographies.
Those who hold art in high regard, and themselves as stratospheric, feel it is a privilege bestowed upon them to deem what is good and bad. If ever asked to justify their opinion, a turgid indecipherable screed might follow. But most likely you’ll be treated with a dismissive sneer. One thing I respect about Greenberg is that he had an opinion and he made a case for it. It is a sorry state of affairs that so many of the cultivated are unable to say what they think, or hide their lack of substance behind a steaming pile of polysyllabic adjectives and run on sentences.
In 1973 Greenberg republished his seminal article and it included this postscript:
“To my dismay I learned years after this saw print that Repin never painted a battle scene; he wasn't that kind of painter. I had attributed someone else's picture to him. That showed my provincialism with regard to Russian art in the nineteenth century.”