Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Showcases Clement Greenberg at his best: provoking, iconoclastic, aggravating, but, above all, lucid." Art Times
Review
"Homemade Esthetics serves as a posthumous encore from a thinker whose influence is still felt in art criticism." Boston Book Review
Review
"Studded with bright apercus, sharp critique, and copious evidence of refreshingly honest taste formation....Greenberg's ruminations exhilirate." New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
A giant of twentieth-century art criticism, Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) set the terms of critical discourse from the moment he burst onto the scene with his seminal essays "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" and "Towards a Newer Laocoon". In
Homemade Esthetics, a compilation of previously uncollected essays based on a series of seminars developed at Bennington College in 1971, Greenberg sets forth his uncompromising views on taste and quality in art.
Using though-provoking arguments, the critic insists that despite the various attempts of modern artists to escape the jurisdiction of taste, taste is inexorable. He maintains 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.
Homemade Esthetics allows us to watch the critic's mind at work, defending (and at times reconsidering) his controversial and influential theories, as he explores the fundamental questions that lie within the esthetic experience of art.
Synopsis
A giant of 20th century art criticism, Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) 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 College in 1971, Greenberg provides his most expansive statement of his views on taste and quality in art. He insists that despite the attempts of modern artists to escape the jurisdiction of taste by producing an art so disjunctive that it cannot be judged, taste is inexorable. He maintains that standards of quality in art, ohe 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. He discusses the interplay of expectation and surprise in aesthetic experience, and the exalted consciousness produced by great art. Homemade Esthetics allows us to watch the critic's mind at work, defending (and at times reconsidering) his controversial and influential theories. Charles Harrison's introduction to this volume places Homemade Esthetics in the context of Greenberg's work and the evolution of 20th century criticism.
About the Author
Clement Greenberg's books include
Art and Culture and four volumes of collected essays and criticism.
Charles T. Harrison of the Open University, co editor of
Art in Theory 1900 1990 and one of the leading writers on modernism, has written an introduction placing
Homemade Esthetics in the context of Greenberg's work and the evolution of 20th century critism.
Table of Contents
Foreword by
Janice Van Horne GreenbergAcknowledgments
Introduction by Charles Harrison
PART I
The Essays
Intuition and Esthetic Experience
Esthetic Judgment
Can Taste Be Objective?
The Factor of Surprise
Judgment and the Esthetic Object
Convention and Innovation
The Experience of Value
The Language of Esthetic Discourse
Observations on Esthetic Distance
PART II
The Bennington College Seminars, April 6-22, 1971
Night One
Night Two
Night Three
Night Four
Night Five
Night Six
Night Seven
Night Eight
Night Nine
Appendix
Further Reading
Index