Analysis Of "Avant-Garde And Kitsch" By Clement Greenberg
In Avant-garde and Kitsch, it is reasonable to believe that Greenberg is writing about the involvement of the aesthetic regarding the position of art in the culture. It is the “where” of the aesthetic really, not the "how" of the experience with the art. When it comes to Modernist Painting though, Greenberg shows that the awareness of the aesthetic is found in how one sees works of art. In his essay Avant-garde and Kitsch, Greenberg divides art into the two categories; avant-garde is named the "genuine" art of our age, which is art that progresses our society. Kitsch and avant-garde are contrasting concepts of art having been created in the art world during a cruel point in history for an artist. Throughout this era, no single tradition, religion, or authority thrived, and so they weren't questioned of the sanity behind any of them. This caused difficult times for artists due to the fact that they directly rely on those themes to create art to engage an audience. For the first time in a long time, the conception of what acceptable art was would be questioned, and that is what Greenberg explains to us.
Avant-garde validly demonstrates how this era had significance vagueness in comparison to its past because of its search for a new unseen style. Avant-garde is the technique of imitating the imitation; simulating the method by which techniques are developed rather than the written process itself. It is aiming to draw the unconscious. Because the art commanded a new approach to interpretation, the validity of avant-garde being a genuine sort of art was challenged. Greenberg then explains to us that, to the trained eye, validity is found, but only by a social level that has the opportunity to devote their leisure time to teaching the eye to notice the idea of this art style is the bourgeois. Consequently, the avant-garde is connected with and supported by the bourgeois. Exactly opposing the idea of the avant-garde is the theory of kitsch which is affiliated with the proletariat and is as a result urbanized. Kitsch’s viewers consisted of people who weren’t scholars of art but instead, craved for some kind of change that only culture could give. Greenberg shows that kitsch illustrates the conscious, adapting to the situations around it and so it is simple to comprehend kitsch because its subject matter is apparent to everyone who sees it.
In comparison, he moved onto the idea of modernism; Greenberg’s interest in this article is to explain that there is reasoning to the growth of modernist art and, specifically, modernist painting. He names the fundamentals of Modernism as. It is self-critical ideas that started with the eighteenth-century philosopher known by many as Immanuel Kant. Under Modernism, all art seeks out purity, which is that nothing can be used from the medium of another art. In that, art is formed not from other more advanced art forms, but from ordinary everyday life and current culture as well, which is remarkably similar to Greenberg's last idea of Kitsch. So although Greenberg challenges his original perspective of art, the underlining of it never really changes from Kitsch to modernism. In Avant-garde and Kitsch, it is reasonable to believe that Greenberg is writing about the involvement of the aesthetic regarding the position of art in the culture. It is the “where” of the aesthetic really, not the "how" of the experience with the art.
When it comes to Modernist Painting though, Greenberg shows that the awareness of the aesthetic is found in how one sees works of art. In the end, it is revealed that Greenberg's notion towards avant-garde is that if you understand it, you are lying; kitsch, everyone can understand; modernity was made for the people of the time. Serge Guilbaut writes in his essay. As clearly stated, Guilbaut does not think that the American culture is open to the concept of avant-garde culture, and tosses it aside as though it was nothing. However, the door is not yet open to the ideas modern art had to offer yet either, but that does not stop the modern artist. Greenberg, had a different perspective, deeming political art irreconcilable and irrelevant to avant-garde work, and therefore a kind of degenerate art that was aesthetically inferior. Guilbaut describes to us how American art openly confronts the authority of Parisian art and declares that the art of New York has secured its position on the international art scene, in place of the Parisians, and that this is a good thing.
From this, it translates that American artist must present their support for American politics in order for their art to be recognized in any form. Greenberg does not agree with this idea, and strikes against the Soviet conception of art in his article responses, as the Soviet preferred realistic art and refused to acknowledge modernism as a form of true art. He also states that the purpose of the artist is to make pure art, and social consciousness had not “worked” to produce "real" art in the last hundred years or so. For Greenberg, art solved nothing for neither those who receive his art, politics or the artist themselves. So the two authors saw things entirely differently, except on how avant-garde art was assigned as American; it was developed and independent, yet connected to the modernist culture. Furthermore, it could be utilized as a representation of freedom that held power in the among the new liberals and administration. So Guilbaut and Greenberg agreed on one thing; communism was not going to be the future, in art or politics.
