Jackson Pollock: Post Avant-Garde In America

Jackson Pollock’s ultimate fan boy came in the form of Clement Greenberg, art critic extraordinaire of the 20th century. He loved the formal language of abstraction and found manifestations of his definition of art in Pollock’s work. His contemporary, Harold Rosenberg, however, would probably have been standing in the corner shaking his head at Greenberg’s enthusiasm, trying to rival it with his own definitions and excitement. To Rosenberg, painting evolved into action and feeling with a near disregard for formalities. Actually, (allegedly) in a more private setting than the essays and newspaper articles, Greenberg and Rosenberg might have even exchanged punches because of their very different views on the post avant-garde in America: abstract expressionism.

Greenberg, it would appear, loved rules. For him, “Modernism used art to call attention to art” (Greenberg, Modernist Painting). He was all about form and technique and found symbolism and realism to be secondary, if not completely
There was a grandeur to Rosenberg’s criticism; he described painting as acting on a stage. He believed the artist’s full mind and spirit were engaged in creating a work, and in the case that the artist abandoned traditional practices like perspective, well, it wasn’t too great a loss. In fact, most paintings probably worked better without those because they were sincerer in the end. That was also something he saw in Jackson Pollock during the creation of his works that Greenberg seemed to forget or dismiss. Rosenberg saw struggles in the painter and tried to figure out why he was painting the way he was. Was it because he was angry, depressed? Probably. Greenberg seemed dismissive of this, and instead went on and on about the end product, the finished work in which he found pleasure because he could make it represent his own