Greenberg, Clement

Greenberg, Clement,

1909–94, American art critic, b. New York City. Greenberg's criticism was primarily concerned with art produced after abstract expressionismabstract expressionism,
movement of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the mid-1940s and attained singular prominence in American art in the following decade; also called action painting and the New York school.
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. This art, now known as color-field paintingcolor-field painting,
abstract art movement that originated in the 1960s. Coming after the abstract expressionism of the 1950s, color-field painting represents a sharp change from the earlier movement.
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, he termed post-painterly abstraction, reflecting Heinrich Wölfflin's theory that painterly and linear styles alternate through the ages. In his essay collection Art and Culture (1961), Greenberg argued that the essence of modern art, especially painting, lies in its purely visual content. Greenberg's philosophy of art was outlined in a series of lectures posthumously published as Homemade Esthetics (1999).

Bibliography

See biography by F. Rubenfeld (1998).