The Intransigent Critic: Reconsidering the reasons for Clement Greenberg’s formalist stance from the early 1930s to the early 1970s © Sheila Christofides A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Postgraduate Board, Student Guild University of New South Wales September, 2004 ABSTRACT This thesis investigates the reasons for Greenberg’s aesthetic intransigence – that is, his adherence to a formalist/purist stance, and his refusal to countenance non-purist twentieth- century avant-garde trends evident in the art he ignored or denigrated, and in the art he promoted. The most substantial body of work challenged is Cold War revisionism (exemplified by the scholarship of Francis Frascina, Serge Guilbaut, and John O’Brian) which casts Greenberg as a politically expedient party to the imperialist agendas of various CIA-funded organisations. The major conclusions reached are that: Greenberg’s aesthetic intransigence was driven by a similarly intransigent ethico-political position, and that his critical method reflected patterns of argumentation set up in ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ (1939). This essay, and Greenberg’s ethico-political position, derived, not least, from his direct encounter with American Nazism and anti-Semitism which led him to realise that America (with what he saw as its decadence, cultural apathy, and low-level mass taste) was as vulnerable to the threat of totalitarianism as Europe and Russia. Reflecting this fear, ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ had juxtaposed a stagnant, impure culture with a vigorous avant- garde culture of impeccable vintage – in the process infusing politics into a formalist, historical conception of modernism Greenberg first devised in the early 1930s and then augmented, during 1938-9, with Hans Hofmann’s theories and others. Thus established, this rudimentary paradigm for Greenberg’s art writing was elaborated upon and made canonical in ‘Towards a Newer Laocoon’ (1940), and entrenched after the war concurrent with the entrenchment of his ethico-political position. In the face of a Stalinist/capitalist war of wills, continuing anti-Semitism, and what Greenberg perceived as increasing decadence, he continued to argue for a serious, professionally-skilled (predominantly abstract) art, which would be resistant to the ersatz, yet not dehumanized by excluding the natural. By promoting this as the only genuine avant-garde art (while ignoring or denigrating playful, humorous and anarchic avant-garde tendencies), and by reiterating in the 1950s his pre-war Marxist sympathies, Greenberg was effectively demonstrating his continued hope for a utopian culture (luxuriant, formal, informed and socialist) first visualised in the late 1930s. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks are due: To the College of Fine Arts, Sydney, for a research grant received in 2001. To my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Alan Krell, and co-supervisor, Dr. Graham Forsyth (Associate Dean, Academic), for their invaluable advice, for their encouragement and help, for opening up the possibility of researching to this level, and for their efforts in appointing examiners. Special thanks to Alan for his careful reading of, and comments upon, chapters in progress and his close criticism of the final draft – and also to Graham for his help in 2001 with the grant application, and his comments on work in progress and the final draft. Thanks also to the examiners for their welcome remarks, and to Douglas McKeough (Research Administration / Student Centre Coordinator) for his help and advice. To Kapil Jariwala for sharing his reflections on Greenberg and for putting me in touch with John McClean. To John McClean for his reflections on Greenberg and for sending me Karen Wilkin’s address. To Karen Wilkin for putting me in touch with William Phillips and Martin Greenberg. To Martin Greenberg for his reflections on his brother. And not least to Lynne Swarts for sharing her insights into Judaism, particularly the significance of history and memory to that religion. To Brenda Stace-Chat, Penelope Wardle and Kay White for their support and patient listening to aspects of this project. To Dawn Baker, Roland Chat, Sandra Curry, Marion Flynn, Victoria King (who commented on the introduction), Sister Rosamund, Cheng-Lian Sim and others for their kind support in various ways during the course of this research. Very special thanks to my family, Andrew and Eleanor Christofides, for their tolerance, support, and encouragement – and to the smallest member, Kelly, for her canine companionship. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction……….……………………….…………………………… 1 Overview……………………………..….………………………. 3 Notes ………………………………………………………..…… 9 Chapter One: Aesthetic Intransigence Criticism……………………………….………………………… 10 Oversights and resounding silence...……………………………. 20 Notes…………………………………………………….….…… 34 Chapter Two: Early Correspondence and Seminal Essays First formalism, first views………...……………………………. 39 ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ and ‘Towards a Newer Laocoon’….... 60 Notes…………………...………………………………………… 66 Chapter Three: The Partisan Review Circle Partisan Review, Dwight Macdonald and Leon Trotsky...……... 71 Brechtian, Eliotic Trotskyism…………………………..….…….. 89 Ignazio Silone …………...……………………………..….…….. 99 Notes ………………...…………………………………...……… 111 Chapter Four: Irving Babbitt and Gotthold Lessing…………………... 116 Notes ……….…………………………………………..………. 127 Chapter Five: ‘Jewishness’ Anti-Semitism……...……………………………………………. 128 Thierry de Duve, Susan Noyes Platt and Robert Storr …….….… 132 Hitler and Yeats ………...………………………………..……… 141 Notes…………………..………………………………………… 160 Chapter Six: A Culture in Plight A wartime perspective …………………...……………..……….. 167 A postwar world-view ……………………...…………..……….. 178 The persistent spectre of anti-Semitism…………………………. 201 Notes…..………………. ……………………………...………... 212 Chapter Seven: Cold War Revisionism Serge Guilbaut ………………..……………………..………….. 220 John O’Brian…………...…………….………………………….. 239 Notes ………………………..…………………………...……… 250 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS, cont. Page Chapter Eight: Culture and Politics Modern culture – a mixed blessing………………...……………. 254 Inveterate Marxism………………………………………………. 263 Notes……………………...……………………………………… 278 Chapter Nine: Seriousness, The Centre of Gravity Isolation and play…………………...…………………………… 284 The importance of work…………………………………………. 295 Notes……………..……………………………………………… 313 Chapter Ten: End of Utopia Francis Frascina…………………………………..……………… 317 Rosenberg earns art a bad name……….…………………..…….. 326 Notes….…………………………………………………………. 334 Conclusion………………………………………….………………….. 339 Notes…………………………..……………………...…………. 350 Bibliography Cited material……………………………………………………. 352 Selected uncited material………………...……………………… 367 Appendix……………………………………………………………….. 374 Notes…………………………………………………………….. 385 iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AGK Clement Greenberg, ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ in: Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism: Volume 1: Perceptions and Judgments 1939-1944, ed. John O’Brian, University of Chicago Press, 1986, 5-22 (first published in Partisan Review, Fall 1939) TNL Clement Greenberg, ‘Towards a Newer Laocoon’, in: Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism: Volume I: Perceptions and Judgments 1939-1944, ed. John O’Brian, University of Chicago Press, 1986, 23-38 (first published in Partisan Review, July-August 1940) O’Brian, Vol. 1 Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 1: Perceptions and Judgments: 1939-1944, ed. John O’Brian, The University of Chicago Press, 1986 O’Brian, Vol. 2 Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism: Volume 2: Arrogant Purpose: 1945-1949, ed. John O’Brian, The University of Chicago Press, 1986 O’Brian, Vol. 3 Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism: Volume 3: Affirmations and Refusals: 1950-1956, ed. John O’Brian, The University of Chicago Press, 1993 O’Brian, Vol. 4 Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism: Volume 4: Modernism with a Vengeance: 1957-1969, ed. John O’Brian, The University of Chicago Press, 1993 O’Brian, John O’Brian, ‘Introduction’, in: Clement Greenberg: The Collected ‘Introduction’ Essays and Criticism: Volume 1: Perceptions and Judgments: (Vol. 1) 1939-1944, ed. John O’Brian, The University of Chicago Press, 1986, xvii-xxv O’Brian, John O’Brian, ‘Introduction’, in: Clement Greenberg: The Collected ‘Introduction’ Essays and Criticism: Volume 3: Affirmations and Refusals: 1950-1956, (Vol. 3) ed. John O’Brian, The University of Chicago Press, 1993, xv-xxxiii 1 INTRODUCTION The importance of Clement Greenberg’s two essays ‘Avant Garde and Kitsch’1 and ‘Towards a Newer Laocoon’2 (the first written in 1939 on the verge of World War Two, and the second in 1940) are, as T.J. Clark once indicated, that they staked out the ground for his later practice as a critic and set down ‘the main lines of a theory and history of culture since 1850’.3 By this Clark would not have meant that these were the only lines, simply that this was Greenberg’s version of modernism. Indeed, it is a point of significance to this thesis that his writings excluded some of modernism’s most exciting developments – particularly those related to varying extents with the art of performance. This very narrowness predetermined that it would only be a matter of time before Greenberg’s theories would be directly challenged by the ascendance of art practices he had, for the most part, ignored, or that his role as a critic would be superceded by writers taking a more inclusive approach. As it happened each eventuated. Not with a bang, but by degrees until, by the mid 1960s, Greenbergian