1. Clement Greenberg
1909 – 1994
an American essayist known
mainly as an influential visual
art critic closely associated with
American Modern art of the
mid-20th century. In particular, he
is best remembered for his
promotion of the abstract
expressionist movement and was
among the first published critics
to praise the work of painter
Jackson Pollock.

2. Avant-Garde and Kitsch
Written in 1939 and first published in the Partisan Review Journal.
Alexandrianism:

3. Avant-Garde Culture
“Art for Art’s Sake”
Subject matter or
Content becomes
something
to be avoided like the
plague.
Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, c. 1913
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a
composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual
references in the world

5. The Imitation of Imitating
Inspiration from the medium
Braque, Harbor
Mondrian, Composition
with Yellow, Blue, and
Picasso, The Guitar Player Red

6. Kandinsky, Transverse Line
Miro, Cat Encircle by the Flight of a Bird
Brancusi, Bird in Space

7. Klee, Insula Dulcamara
Cézanne,
Mount Sainte-Victoire
Matisse, Luxe, calme et volupté

8. “Kitsch” a product of the Industrial Revolution
Ersatz Culture, (the inferior culture)
Repin, Ivan the Terrible and His Son

9. The values of the vividly
recognizable, the miraculous
and the sympathetic.
“It tells a story.”
Maxfield Parrish, Ecstasy

10. Art accessible to all.

11. Example of Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda

12. Boccioni, States of Mind III: Those Who Stay
“Today we no longer look towards
socialism for a new culture – as
inevitably as one will appear, once we
do have socialism. Today we look to
socialism simply for the preservation of
whatever living culture we have right Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street
now.” --Marx