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Since the 1970s, it has been argued that Abstract Expressionism was exhibited abroad by the post-war US establishment in an attempt to culturally match and reinforce its newfound economic and military dominance. The account of Abstract Expressionism developed by the American critic Clement Greenberg is often identified as central to these efforts. However, this book rereads Greenberg's account through Theodor Adorno and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in order to contend that Greenberg's criticism in fact testifies to how Abstract Expressionism opposes the ends to which it was deployed.
With reference not only to the most famous artists of the movement, but also female artists and artists of colour whom Greenberg himself neglected, such as Joan Mitchell and Norman Lewis, it is argued that, far from reinforcing the capitalist status quo, Abstract Expressionism engages corporeal and affective elements of experience dismissed or delegitimated by capitalism, and promises a world that would do justice to them.
List of contents
Introduction
1. Greenberg's Trotskyism
2. Figuring Negation
3. Making Things of Which We Know Not What They Are
4. Greenberg's Kantianism contra Greenberg's Positivism
5. The Silent World of the Sensible
6. Denunciation and Anticipation
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Daniel Neofetou completed his PhD at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK. He is the author of Good Day Today: David Lynch Destabilises the Spectator (2012) and regularly contributes to The Wire and Art Monthly. In 2018 he curated Divine Cargo, a group show of performance art at The South London Gallery.
Summary
Since the 1970s, it has been argued that Abstract Expressionism was exhibited abroad by the post-war US establishment in an attempt to culturally match and reinforce its newfound economic and military dominance. The account of Abstract Expressionism developed by the American critic Clement Greenberg is often identified as central to these efforts. However, this book rereads Greenberg's account through Theodor Adorno and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in order to contend that Greenberg’s criticism in fact testifies to how Abstract Expressionism opposes the ends to which it was deployed.
With reference not only to the most famous artists of the movement, but also female artists and artists of colour whom Greenberg himself neglected, such as Joan Mitchell and Norman Lewis, it is argued that, far from reinforcing the capitalist status quo, Abstract Expressionism engages corporeal and affective elements of experience dismissed or delegitimated by capitalism, and promises a world that would do justice to them.
Additional text
The scope and ambitions of Rereading Abstract Expressionism is very different, but also very clear and powerful ... Rereading Abstract Expressionism is an important contribution to the study of abstract expressionism and its one-sided reception in post-Greenbergian years. It is now time to go back to the paintings themselves and to check the validity of his very stimulating new interpretations of the discourses that have “made” abstract expressionism what it was and today no longer is, namely the promise of an absolute and absolutely liberating art.
