The Critics they Loved to Hate: Barbara Rose, Clement Greenberg and the Cliché as Weapon in American Art

When Clement Greenberg penned ‘Avant Garde and Kitsch’ in 1939, he likely did not anticipate that his own essay would meet the same fate of the art it denigrated. But this is precisely what happened in the 1960s, when the set of terms Greenberg had associated with the avant garde – flatness, formalism, medium-specificity – became clichés, and the name ‘Greenberg’ itself was turned into shorthand for an outmoded art criticism. The kitschification of Greenberg and his art-critical project was set in motion by a group of ambitious critics who variously claimed that his theories had been undone by the art of the 1960s. One of these critics went a step further by claiming that Greenberg’s writings never even outlived the 1930s; according to Barbara Rose, it had arrived at abstract expressionism already kitsch. Only a decade later, Rose herself would be relegated to the same camp as Greenberg. Responding to her decision to mount an exhibition of painting in in 1979, Hal Foster called Rose a “reactionary” and Douglas Crimp mocked her for writing for Vogue.

This presentation will dwell on the parallel between Rose and Greenberg’s art-critical downfalls, paying particular attention to the repetition of Rose’s critique of Greenberg in her own undoing. Both critics were dethroned by being turned into clichés, a move that has obscured their intellectual contribution. By exposing these clichés for what they were – attack tools – I hope to put pressure on the tendency in American art criticism to parody the opposition.