- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press (19 Oct 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0195139232
- ISBN-13: 978-0195139235
- Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 13.4 x 1.3 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,352,104 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Thanks to his unsurpassed eye and his fearless willingness to take a stand, Clement Greenberg (1909 1994) became one of the giants of 20th century art criticism a writer who set the terms of critical discourse from the moment he burst onto the scene with his seminal essays Avant Garde and Kitsch (1939) and Towards a Newer Laocoon (1940). In this work, which gathers previously uncollected essays and a series of seminars delivered at Bennington in 1971, Greenberg provides his most expansive statement of his views on taste and quality in art, arguing for an esthetic that flies in the face of current art world fashions. Greenberg insists despite the attempts from Marcel Duchamp onwards to escape the jurisdiction of taste by producing an art so disjunctive that it cannot be judged that taste is inexorable.
He argues that standards of quality in art, the artist's responsibility to seek out the hardest demands of a medium, and the critic's responsibility to discriminate, are essential conditions for great art. The obsession with innovation the epidemic of newness leads, in Greenbergs view, to the boringness of so much avant garde art. He discusses the interplay of expectation and surprise in aesthetic experience, and the exalted consciousness produced by great art. Homemade Esthetics allows us particularly in the transcribed seminar sessions, never before published to watch the critics mind at work, defending (and at times reconsidering) his theories. His views, often controversial, are the record of a lifetime of looking at and thinking about art as intensely as anyone ever has. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
He argues that standards of quality in art, the artist's responsibility to seek out the hardest demands of a medium, and the critic's responsibility to discriminate, are essential conditions for great art. The obsession with innovation the epidemic of newness leads, in Greenbergs view, to the boringness of so much avant garde art. He discusses the interplay of expectation and surprise in aesthetic experience, and the exalted consciousness produced by great art. Homemade Esthetics allows us particularly in the transcribed seminar sessions, never before published to watch the critics mind at work, defending (and at times reconsidering) his theories. His views, often controversial, are the record of a lifetime of looking at and thinking about art as intensely as anyone ever has. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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2 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
thoughtful and provocative musings on art and taste
4 April 2000
Format:Hardcover
Clement Greenberg makes the reader long for the time when criticism came in the form of thoughtful commentary and considered analysis rather than jargon laden showmanship of today. He was elitist and irascible to be sure--a real curmudgeon--but he had an opinion and wasn't afraid to express it. It's easy to disagree with a lot of Greenberg's grand pronouncements but the provocation is welcomed--it stimulates thought and encourages engagement with aesthetic issues. Greenberg's comments about art and kitsch, art and commerce are all the more fascinating post-Warhol/Koons/Sachs, etc.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
A fitting epitaph to an astringent critic
26 Jan 2003
Format:Paperback
Clement Greenberg has proven to be one of the most influential art critics of the 20th century. In fact, his name has become almost synonymous with mainstream Modernism, due in no small part to his lucid and carefully considered criticism. This post-humously compiled book is comprised of a series of transcripts from seminars at Bennington college in the 1970s on the nature of taste and criticism. There are also a series of complementary essays based upon the transcripts. However, the seminars (where Greenberg is questioned by the audience) more fully reveal the man himself; his sharp intelligence, his truculence, as well as his tendency to be contradictory and make enormous generalisations.
Greenberg's influence in the art world had waned considerably by the time these seminars took place. However, he still had plenty of insight to offer on the pretensions of the 1960s/70s avant-garde, namely his savaging of "far-out" conceptual art, which Greenberg claimed was simply tasteful Salon art masquerading under the guise of radicalism. It's this sort of irreverence which makes the book an interesting read. Whether you agree with Greenberg or not, it's hard to doubt the honesty with which he set about his task as a critic. He was never fazed by art-world talk, nor artist's reputations (no matter how large), and his advice on honestly reporting your aesthetic responses to art should be taken on board by art-lovers everywhere.
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