I read a four-volume set of the collected writings of Clement Greenberg and consider this to be the fifth book, even though a different editor put it together. It wraps up what I read earlier and clarifies what little Greenberg had left to clarify of his aesthetic. Granted it is only one man's opinions, but what opinions! Even if you don't agree with many of his individual ideas, he gives off a profound sense of understanding the ins and out of Modern Art. Further, if what he states is Modern, you are left with a sense of what must be Postmodern. He touches briefly on that topic as well.

I recommend this book both for artists and for anyone attempting to understand Modern Art. Greenberg's writing became a little thicker as he aged, but he is about as down-to-earth as a critic of his type can be. You might have to run to the dictionary here and there, but that is a small price to pay for what you get in return. If you are frustrated with other art critics being too opaque, Greenberg is a good alternative. Well, I can't help but add that, to me, he is one of the definitive critics of Modern Art!

The most exciting thing about reading Clement Greenberg's essays is trying to decide how relevant is what he writes in the art world today and how relevant is his work to me as an artist. I read each essay hoping that the next one will give me yet another clue to this queston. The secret dream of what l want art to be - art that is verifiably good and bad through objective aesthetic sensibility - is the core of what Greenberg's essays are about and what makes them so seductive and so painful to read.

This work helps to clarify the importance of Hans Hofmann's works and why he is considered one of the most important art teachers of the 20th century. This work is especially important to any artist wanting to become the best they can become in their field. The ideas presented by Hofmann can take a lifetime to "master", but well worth the effort. His ideas are more than just "theory", they are a basic understanding of how to enliven a flat pictorial space and how to infuse oneself in one's work.

Florence Rubenfeld tells a magnificent story about a topic that might otherwise be rather dull: art criticism. She does, however, have great material to work with. Greenberg is intelligent, insightful, and had a difficult personality. The latter should not be seen as a drawback, however. A strong personality was needed to convince Americans and Europeans of the value of abstract expressionism and color field painting.

Rubenfeld provides a thorough story. I have written one book, Art in the Courtroom, and am busy on another one. Therefore, I consider myself fairly well-read with respect to art. I learned a tremendous amount. Nothing can be better than an informative book that is written well. Thank you F Rubenfeld.

Best biography in years about manufacture of American culture.As recently as 1951,you could not give away examples of abstract American art.With the assistance of powerful art collectors such as Ben Sonnenberg,( who revolutionized the public relations industry) an obscure,hard-drinking,cocaine-loving New York journalist named Clement Greenberg-- almost single-handed--hoisted American art to the commanding heights.This is romantic stuff.But no other book is so honest about the creation of value in Abstract Expressionism,Color Field painting,Pop Art and Minimalism.This is like reading the honest recollections of people who created the computer-driven stock markets.It is the book of the year. And maybe the book of the decade.Do not miss this smog-clearing gem!

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.

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.

Clement Greenberg does an excellent job of explaining how the individual and society experience and identify art. His essays on avante-garde, kitsch, and modernist painting are especially interesting, although his socialist "tendencies" tend to undermine objective discussion and mix art and politics (not always inseperable anyway, though). If you read Greenberg, you should also check out T.J. Clark, who takes issue with many of Greenberg's ideas.

Greenberg was the celebrated champion of a briefly-celebrated school of art. Sometimes it was called Abstract Expressionism, sometimes neo-plasticism. Think Rothko, think Newman... and if either name fails to jog your memory, or warm your cockles, think huge, corporate abstract. Think bank-lobby art. //That's// what he championed? //That// gospel was preached, by collectors, curators and bank lobbies all over the world? Why? How did we do it? How did we take him so seriously for so long? What is his legacy? Perhaps the most devastating answer to this last question was delivered by the populist art commentator Mathew Collinge. He said that the Greenberg legacy was "...still around, but only in the American provincial museums, in the heartlands and in the midwest..." (This is Modern Art, 1998) Could there be any more damning verdict? To be championed precisely by those institutions and individuals most pathetically anxious to be //au courant//? Never mind. The monster does not need to be slain: he was never a monster to begin with. No: a little sleight of hand with the deck of art history may have made Greenberg seem monstrously important in his day (the 1950s), monstrously wrong in ours. But he was neither. His hatred of the straightforwardly narrative and figurative, and even his famous doctrine of "significant form", was simply borrowed from a much earlier British critic, Clive Bell, who coined the term in 1915. As for his enthusiasms, they had their roots in the post-Cubist experiments of Malevich, rather than in the New York School simplicity which Mondrian -- who had escaped to Manhattan during the war -- had done so much to inspire. Americans should stop taking the blame for Greenberg, and so should Greenberg. Greenberg warmed over a school of art well dead by the time Malevich, in the early 1920s, realised that his "Suprematist" black squares were going nowhere. Similarly, he warmed over the essays of Clive Bell which were written, hearly half a century earier, to boost and promote Cubist-inspired experiments. In other words, Greenberg was a throwback posing as a modernist. One good thing: the caricatured, simplified Modernism which he sold to 1950s America was such a bore that, when the inevitable rebellion came, no mercy was shown. Warhol did not merely dismiss Greenbergian art, he despised it. In Warhol's (and Rosenquist's and Rauchenberg's) world of the abject and the human, there was less than zero room for the neo-Calivinist utopia of Greenberg and his crew. Still, you have to wonder. This book, which has Greenberg at his most confident and most arrogant, is certainly a fascinating case-study of artistic dogma gone wrong. We bought it, and we rejected it -- but his legacy maintains a stubborn half-life. Cash a check today and you'll see where.

- Paul O'Kelly, Dublin, Ireland