Clement Greenberg

Die Essenz der Moderne (The Essence of Modernism)
Selected Essays and Criticism
VOLUME 133

Clement Greenberg’s Genealogy of Modernism

Like no other writer of his time, Clement Greenberg understood how to give a form and direction to reflections on art—and even to art itself. New York’s ascension to the capital of postwar modernism was inseparable from his radically formulated conception of art. As an advisor to artists and gallery owners as well as the curator of numerous exhibitions, he had a lasting impact on the events of the time and influenced the emergence and presentation of the new art scene that developed after the end of World War II. Greenberg’s radical rejection of everything representational and a rigorous interest in what was factually there led to painters like Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland, among others, becoming central to the private and public collections of the era.

Edited by Karlheinz Lüdeking, the book brings together selected essays and critique from 1939 to 1981. Translated from English by Christoph Hollender. New edition of the original German edition from 1997.

Clement Greenberg (b. 1909 in New York; d. 1994 in New York) is debatably the most influential and eloquent American art critic of the post-war period. His essays and critique appeared in catalogs, monographs, and numerous magazines—including Partisan Review, The Nation, and Arts Magazine.