Reading about the life of Clement Greenberg makes me glad I'm an amateur artist who does it for love. I am well aware that 'amateurism' tends to be looked down on with contempt and derision, compared with the lofty heights reached, or at least aspired to, by the 'true' artist, the professional, the talented art star or even genius who toughs it out in the competitive and fickle art world. But for me 'amateur' does not necessarily imply 'amateurish': the word derives from the Latin meaning 'lover', from amatore 'to love'. And that's the way I see myself, as a lover, because I love what I do. Period.

In my private universe the act of creativity is always just in its beginning, formative, emergent stages, before it becomes crystallised into the known, predictable, and dismissible. Art has not yet been hijacked by anyone to be critiqued, theorised, and deconstructed; subverted into something unintended, opposite and unforseen; used against itself in the cause of one tyranny after another. The art I love retains its simplicity and innocence despite the crushing weight of art history and the convoluted knowingness of my sophisticated contemporaries. Consciously primitive when primitivism has been given a bad name, I maintain the illusion that inner necessity is no less important now than it was for Kandinsky; that taking a line for a walk is just as sacred as it was for Klee; that the uncultivated and untutored can have a raw, spontaneous, sublime beauty like that of the CoBrA movement; that there are connections to be made which can only be discovered in the act of creation, the act of love-doing; that the art in one's soul outweighs all the art that fills the galleries and museums of the world; and that it is my indisputable right to pursue such ostensible folly if that is my choice.

Against the invisible infrastructure of the inner art world there is the tangible superstructure of the outer, where Clement Greenberg strutted and pontificated for four post-WWII decades. Florence Rubenfeld's Clement Greenberg: a Life (Scribner, New York, 1997) is a fascinating glimpse into the behind-the-scenes machinations that serve to establish and perpetuate artistic reputations. Clem, as everyone called him, was as much a dictatorial sadist, a vampiric bully thriving on the blood of artists such as Jackson Pollock, David Smith, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski and Anthony Caro, as he was their benevolent champion. He was the sun around which 'his' artists revolved, locked into a kind of Faustian pact, dependent on Clem's every edict like junkies awaiting their next fix. To go along with Clem, if you were favoured enough to get the opportunity, meant admission to an elite network of dealers and supportive critics who looked up to Greenberg as the 'eye from on high'. Belonging to the coterie meant psychological subservience to Clem, jostling for the position of his most favoured artist, and slipping him a painting from time to time - surely not too much to ask in return for hitting the big time? However Clem can't have been the only critic to benefit financially when his artists achieved success, neither then nor in today's multi-million dollar art world.

The biggest downside of such slavish dependency on the critic was the fear of losing his good graces, leading to demotion or even expulsion from the inner circle. Jackson Pollock, touted as possibly "the greatest living painter in the United States" (a ridiculous piece of posturing) by Life magazine in 1949, owed his notorious prominence to none other than Greenberg, referred to in the article as the "formidably highbrow New York critic" who had suggested it in the first place. It was the kiss of death for Pollock, a burdensome curse he could never live up to, earning him widespread derision as "Jack the Dripper". Always emotionally intense, withdrawn, and inarticulate, he went completely to pieces after Clem wrote in 1955 that Pollock's innovative years were over, elevating Clyfford Still in his place. Many in the artist's circle believed he never recovered from this coup de grace, resulting in psychic disintegration and eventual self-destruction.

The last artist Greenberg was to exalt so highly was Jules Olitski, "the world's best living painter", a slightly less grandiose claim than for "best living artist". But where Pollock's reputation has solidified over the years, Olitski's has so far failed to reach widespread prominence. Of course by the late 80's any pronouncement by Clem was worth nothing to those 'at the cutting edge': as his own credibility waned, so did the prevailing critical view of his artists. But while 'Clembashing' gradually grew to a fever pitch, in its turn becoming a sign of artworld-insider status, his influence in dealer circles remained exceptionally strong. From small post-WWII beginnings in New York, Greenbergian formalism - underpinning high modernism in the styles of abstract expressionism, then post-painterly abstraction or colour field painting - had become the international benchmark for artistic taste, the house style dominating a myriad of art schools and informing the proclivities of rich collectors intent on adorning their architectural-showcase houses or apartments. Yet, according to Rubenfeld:

"The New York art world treated Clem's death, in 1994, as a nonevent. No museum hosted a memorial service, no avalanche of articles reexamined his contribution to twentieth-century art criticism or attempted to position him among his peers. Few obituaries rehearsed his accomplishments with the comprehension necessary for an adequate review of his position."

It's too easy to indulge in Clembashing without acknowledging the critic's good points, and Rubenfeld's account is far more interesting for being well-balanced and fair. Clem did battle with other critics, notably Harold Rosenberg, chief proponent of the ill-founded theory of 'action-painting', and emerged victorious. There is nothing shameful in having better ideas and demolishing those of your opponents. Ok, so Clem may have been underhanded in some ways and had his human failings, but he was far from alone in that. The problem for the art world was that, for far too long, Greenberg's hegemony of taste held tyrannical sway: artists who didn't conform to that predominant abstract look were discounted, they just didn't seem to fit in the prevailing scheme of things. An anti-Greenberg reaction grew into an avalanche which equated him and his ideas with everything that was bad and needed to be expunged. So now the nasty domineering tyrant is dead, and every artist gets a fair share of critical recognition in the new order of pluralism, multiculturalism, equal opportunity, and all round political correctness: right?

Wrong, of course. The artworld is no better for having outlasted Clement Greenberg, though it may be worse. But I am not about to launch into artworld-bashing, as enjoyable a pastime for artworld outsiders as Clembashing apparently is for insiders. At least Clem was prepared to stake his reputation on what he believed, and did not keep changing his mind to keep on side of the shifting winds of the Zeitgeist. His position was just too straightforward and unsophisticated, it seems, for the tyrants of the artworld that replaced him, the ones who now pronounce from on high to us, whoever they are and whatever they may stand for.

Copyright © 2000 Max Podstolski All Rights Reserved

Max Podstolski is an information specialist in Fine Arts and Humanities at the University of Canterbury Library in Christchurch, New Zealand, and occasionally-exhibiting 'primitive modernist' painter.