How Does Clam Diggers (1963) Relate to Abstract Expressionism?: Exploring Criticism of Post War American Art

Paris was considered the cultural center of art in, at least, the western world for centuries but the turbulent early decades of the twentieth century saw surrealism as the last Parisian art movement before influential artists fled or were exiled from Paris such as Max Ernst and Marc Chagall amongst others, most of which arrived in the United States of America (USA). After the war concluded in 1945, Paris had lost its claim as the capital of Painting and New York had taken its place. A new cultural centre brought new ideas, challenges, theories, techniques, subjects, interests, artists, and criticisms thus a liminal period of experimentation began which saw the birth of a number of collectives, movements and groups that despite being their own distinguishable factions were inarguably influenced by each other in some way or another. This essay will explore the Abstract Expressionism ‘movement’ born in this period including its critics, criteria, artists and the work of Willem De Kooning, a key artist of the time.

In the 1940-50s, Clement Greenberg was one of the most influential art critics: a contributor to numerous magazines such as the Nation and ARTnews as well as an editor for Partisan Review between 1940-42. When the influence of Paris was shifted to the USA it was imperative, in the eyes of Greenberg, that American painting should be an extension and continuation of French Painting like that of Edouard Manet and Paul Cézanne (Figures 1&2). Greenberg believed in ‘pure’ art and the idea that all art should strive to be so; the way in which to achieve this was to refine and purify the medium to only what is essential which for Greenberg meant only the fact that it is a painting; separation from modern life and mass culture was crucial to the continuation of tradition (Kleeblatt, et al., 2008, pp. 1-2).“It is a law of modernism that applies to almost all art…that the conventions not essential to the viability of the medium be discarded as soon as they are recognized” (Greenberg, 1955); Context, figuration, subject and depth were needless and thus impure. Greenberg wanted American artists to strive for flatness in a bid to avoid illusionism of depth in a show of respect for the flatness of the canvas (Kleeblatt, et al., 2008, p. 6).

Greenberg’s was obviously not the only influential critic of his time, while his critical output lessened as he took a position advising commercial galleries in the 1950s, Harold Rosenberg’s output increased and despite not writing a lot about specific artists before the late 1950’s he had strong personal connections with a number of those operating at the time such as De Kooning and Arshille Gorky  since the 1930s (Kleeblatt, et al., 2008, p. 3). In 1952 Rosenberg’s seminal essay ‘The American Action Painters’ was published in ARTnews in which he coined the term ‘action painting’ (Kleeblatt, et al., 2008, p. 3), he wrote “at a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American Painter after another as an arena in which to act…What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event” (Rosenberg, 1952) and went on to rebuff Greenberg’s idea of ‘pure art’ in an analogy: “The new American Painting is not “pure art”, since the extrusion of the object was not for the sake of aesthetic. The apples weren’t brushed off the table in order to make room for the perfect relations of space and colour. They had to go so that nothing would get in the way of the act of painting.” (Rosenberg, 1952). Rosenberg’s use of ‘arena’ highlights the growing showmanship in art at the time- the photographs taken by Martha Holmes for LIFE magazine in 1949 do a similar job. Holmes photographed Pollock and his wife, fellow painter Lee Krasner, at their home and in their Long Island studio. (Cosgrove, n.d.)The photographs, such as Jackson Pollock in His Studio (1949) (figure 5)  show pollock in black and white creating his large drip paintings in his studio where he worked on the floor and usually with a cigarette in his mouth. Holmes’ photographs are raw, unposed and communicate a great sense of Pollock’s immersion in the creative process. It is possible to see in his paintings faint cigarette burns, ash stains and accidental marks like footprints which remind the viewer that the work has a creator and was created. Rosenberg was concerned with creating a new type of art in America when “[the] laboratory of the twentieth century had shut down”(Rosenberg, 1940) -why should American painting strive for what the French had already achieved when the opportunity to create something new was right there?

Greenberg and Rosenberg, or ‘The Bergs’ as called by Tom Wolf in their book The Painted Word (1975) had been contemporaries writing for the same publications. Both were young, Jewish Marxists in the art world but despite their similarities the two ended up in radically different places in terms of their art criticism as well as having a strained personal relationship. After the publication of ‘The American Action Painters’ in 1952, the personal divide became and ideological split, also. Greenberg went on to publish ‘American Type Painting’ three years later in which he criticized Rosenberg’s concept of action painting. (Kleeblatt, et al., 2008, p. 7).  “For Greenberg the independent, alienated avant-garde remained one of the few instruments with which to transform capitalist society…the avant-garde was clearly separated from, even elevated above, the banality of both bourgeoisie and the anti-bourgeoise”  (Kleeblatt, et al., 2008, p. 5). Greenberg also finding inspiration in Immanuel Kant’s ‘art for art’s sake’ philosophy wrote  “’art for art’s sake’ and ‘pure poetry’ appear, and subject matter or content becomes something to be avoided like the plague” (Greenberg, 1939). The term ‘avant-garde’ is derived from the military term ‘Vanguard’ which refers to a specific branch of soldiers who would lead the way for the troops behind them; in terms of art, avant-garde describes work that is new, innovative and leads the way for a new form of art. It is interesting that Greenberg considers the post war American painters to be avant-garde in a positive regard despite his strong belief in the continuation of tradition as opposed to Rosenberg’s lust for a new type of art America that aimed to deal with “with the connections between art and life……and, not least, creation as the personal, psychic expression of individuality” (Kleeblatt, et al., 2008, p. 9).

A group of the time’s living artists and poets were operating as The New York School, a collective of modern creatives in the USA including painters De Kooning, Jackson Pollock (figure 6) , Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell (figure 7)  as well as poets Barbara guest, Frank O’Hara and John Asherby (executive editor of ARTnews for almost a decade )to name a few (Anon., 2014). Despite being recognised as a school, Rosenberg did not accept this- “The American Action Painters took oppositions between mass culture and individual will …Refusing to define this art as a recognizable school or movement, Rosenberg saw artists’ individual expression- their gestures and process- as a radical shift, a break with the history of art” (Kleeblatt, et al., 2008, p. 7). Rosenberg wrote “This new painting does not constitute a school. To form a school in modern times not only is a new painting consciousness needed but a consciousness of that consciousness…A school is the result of the linkage of practice to terminology…In the American vanguard the words, as we shall see, belong not to the art but to the individual artists.” (Rosenberg, 1952, p. 2). The group was informal, but most were working under or in response to Abstract Expressionism. Stephen C. Foster commented, not until the mid-1970s, that “what became clear in the fifties is that these critical positions were conceived by their authors as mutually exclusive” (Foster, 1975, p. 77). Fifteen years earlier, O’Hara had already criticised this exclusivity in a an exhibition catalogue from a Frankenthaler exhibition at the Jewish Museum: “One of the crucial decisions for the contemporary artist…is the very question of conscious composition, whether to ‘make the picture’ or ‘let it happen’…Each has its pitfalls, the one dry formalism, the other a complete mess”  (Frank O'hara, 1960), highlighting the pressure that the two critics were inadvertently placing on the artists under the school.

De Kooning worked within the New York School and was featured in articles by both Greenberg and Rosenberg, but never truly ascribed to the Greenbergian criteria of abstract art. De Kooning never abandoned figuration in his work and continued to paint until 1990 at which time he had begun to show signs of mental decline (Anon., 2001). In Greenberg’s Art and Culture (1961), he addresses this refusal to abandon the figure-“De Kooning’s figurative paintings are haunted as much as his abstract ones are by the disembodied contours of Michelangelo’s, Ingress’s and even Ruben’s nudes…De Kooning has won quicker and wider acceptance in this country than any of the other original “abstract expressionists”; his need to include the past as well as to forestall the future seems to reassure a lot of people who still find Pollock incomprehensible.” (Greenberg, 1961, pp. 205-207). Considering Greenberg considered figuration an impurity, he suggests here that De Kooning’s warm reception from the American public was due to his use of the human form derived from the classical nude, perhaps even insinuating that De Kooning’s work could be deemed kitsch rather than fine art. Greenberg considered De Kooning a cubist painter, rather than an abstractionist- “he does remain a Late Cubist in a self-evident way…The method of his savagery continued to be almost old-fashionedly(sic), and anxiously Cubist underneath the flung and tortured colour,” (Greenberg, 1961, p. 207) but despite De Kooning’s refusal to follow the ‘rules’ set out by Greenberg, the critic wrote kindly about him, describing him as a “completely independent force…and perhaps the strongest and most original painter” (Greenberg, 1961, p. 225).

De Kooning’s painting Clam Diggers (1963) (figure 8) certainly does not resemble the work of other abstract expressionists. The piece lacks the ‘all-over quality’ that Greenberg deemed crucial in abstraction, ‘all-over’ links back to the idea that the canvas should appear flat and void of illusion, it should be balanced with no part standing out more than any other, like a wallpaper- “the “all-over” painter renders every element and every area equivalent in accent emphasis” (Greenberg, 1961, p. 151). The work of Pollock and the color-field painters such as Rothko, Frankenthaler (figure 9) and Morris Louis (figure 10) perfectly represent this quality. Clam Diggers clearly shows two female figures stood side by side in positions that obscure their face from the viewer even though their faces are already obscured by thick coagulations of oil paints applied in layers and layers. Their pale bodies are on display; they stand out against the muddy background thanks to some gestural brush strokes around the figures. The painting is indefinable, the figures are reminiscent of art brut painter Jean Dubuffet’s The Three Fluids (1950) (figure 11),  a crude portrait from a series of warped female nudes, similarities between this Corps De Dames series and De Kooning’s Woman series that spanned from 1950-1953 (Anon., n.d.) (figure 12). The palate resembles that of the early expressionists, especially those involved in the Vienna Secession nearly five decades prior such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele (figure 13) who often dealt with distorted versions of the human form. De Kooning was happy for his work to be separated from French taste- “…French artists have some ‘touch’ in making an object. They have a particular something that makes them look like a ‘finished’ painting. They have a touch which I am glad not to have.” (De Kooning & Tauchman, 1971, p. 27). Clam Diggers is but one example of De Kooning’s work that does not fit in with Greenberg’s theory of art, amongst others are Abstraction (1950)(figure 14) , Devil At the Keyboard (1976) (figure 15) and paintings from his Women series which shows that De Kooning was happy to work according to his own motivations; in an interview he said “Every man works for himself…I force my attitude upon this world, and I have this right” (De Kooning & Tauchman, 1971, p. 29). On the other hand, De Kooning did create a number of Greenbergian abstract artworks such as Excavation (1950), Rose Fingered Dawn at Louise Point (1965) (figure  16) and Police Gazette (1975) amongst others that possess the all-over quality and formlessness that was desirable at the time. Even still, De Kooning’s ability to work in different modes highlights the importance of freedom and individuality in art that Rosenberg promoted.

It's clear that the mutual exclusivity between Greenberg and Rosenberg’s theories created a confusion amongst artists operating in America under the umbrella of abstract expressionism. While Rosenberg’s theory provided artists with an opportunity to be expressive and experimental, Greenberg’s prescriptivist position limited this. Although I find value in Greenberg’s commitment to the continuation of tradition it seems that, with hindsight, his criticism was redundant to a degree. The success of De Kooning’s ‘impure’ artwork and his legacy are proof of this alongside the multitude of other post war American artists who found success and inspired new generations despite their refusal to adhere to strict rules in art.

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