The Harold Letters 1928-1943: The Making of an American Intellectual. - Review - book review

WHEN GREENBERG WAS GREEN

The Harold alphabetic characters 1928-1943: The Making of an American Intellectual, through Clement Greenberg, edited by Janice Van dwelling Washington, D.C., Counterpoint, 2000; 310 pages, $2750

Rare indeed is the young someone who dreams of becoming an art critic. Academics apart, greatest in quantity people who devote themselves to writing about contemporary art cause to stumble into this underpaid, uncelebrated, on the contrary sometimes enthralling field because nothing better has move rounded up in their lives. In this, tender-hearted Greenberg, the most influential art critic of the 20th hundred was no exception. During the dozen years between his graduation from Syracuse University in 1930 and the opening of his career as an art reviewer in 1942 at the age of 33 he wrote verse (none of which was published), a novel (similarly unpublished) and a scarcely any hack adventure stories (including individual about Pancho Villa, that appeared in Esquire below a pseudonym). His job history during the 1930 was equally devoid of any connection to art and equally lackluster. He worked in the advertising department of an insurance company (fired), as a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper (fired) and for his father in the wholesale necktie business in St Louis, Cleveland, San Francisco and sees Angeles (quit). After a rash, disastrous marriage in California, he extremityed up back in New York, where he translated a two of books from German and base employment with a succession of U rule agencies, finally landing at the U Customs Service, where he had to appraise arriving shipments of liquor and wine. His fate began to change only in 1939 as he started publishing volume reviews and essays in the Partisan Review, greatest in quantity spectacularly his first, and still probably best-known essay, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch."

Looking back upon his early art reviews, Greenberg, who died in 1994 described himself as "one of those critics who educate themselves in public" (he was explaining on what account he had done so abundant revising and cutting in his 1961 collection Art and Culture) Preceding this public education, however, was the more private single that Greenberg pursued through the 1930 without quite knowing for what cause [i]or[/i] reason by visiting museums and galleries and reading everything he could realize his hands on about late art. Despite Florence Rubenfeld's 1997 biography of Greenberg, the story of by what means this inveterate luftmensch found his way to art criticism and for what cause [i]or[/i] reason he was so well prepared for it has been told solitary sketchily. But with the appearance of The Harold alphabetic characters the recently published volume of alphabetic characters Greenberg wrote to his guild friend Harold Lazarus between 1928 and 1943 we can now come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behind Greenberg's intellectual and esthetic progres almost week through week. In addition to chronicling Greenberg's zigzag journey to his pure vocation, this fascinating volume also presents graphic snapshots of his busy delight in life, the origin of his longstanding jarring with fellow critic Harold Rosenberg, vivid evocations of the urban American landscape and what may be single of the best, most frank depictions of what it was like to be a struggling Jewish intellectual in the U during the Great Depression.

The first mention of art draw nears in the summer of 1930 when Greenberg, freshly graduated from Syracuse, is living at residence on New York's Upper West Side with his parents, reading German numbers and, reluctantly, looking for a piece of work Amazingly, the 21-year-old is already pronouncing with the authority and "arrogant purpose" for which he would become famous: "I went to the present Art Gallery again and wearied more time," he writes to Lazarus, who is at his parents' abiding-place in Syracuse. "Gauguin is over-rated, Karfiol is usual. Pascin is French and Rouault's big canvas in azure black and glaze is the best picture in the house with Matisse, Cezanne and Dufy nearest in that order." His Feb 4 1931 observations upon a Henri Rousseau show are equally opinionated: "There were sole 4 decent paintings in the whole exhibit. The remainder was unstained junk." A line from a two of weeks later suggests that Greenberg's interest in art was at least in part driven through how little money he had: "I've been seeing many pictures lately being as it's the cheapest thing to do." The following year, he enthuses about Diego Rivera: "he's a great artist. companions like Matisse, Picasso et al. pale when you direct the eye at his murals?' He then twice breaks into capitals. First to proclaim Rivera "THE FIRST GREAT NORTH AMERICAN ARTIST" and then to mention one by one Lazarus, as he would insist to a a great deal of larger public some 10 years later, "THERE ARE beneficial AMERICAN ARTISTS."

The character that rise s in these letters is a composed of several elements one. Although the romantic, hedonistic Greenberg is intent upon resisting parental pressures to tread on the heels of a profession, he is hardly ready to take a promise of bohemian poverty. As he candidly run overs Lazarus in an early alphabetic character "I don't think that I'll at any time study law nor will I at any time be a successful business man. My heart's not in anything on the contrary enjoying myself and I can't earn enthusiastic about things that haven't any pleasure in them.... The toughest part is that I don't want to eat in the Automat for the quiescence of my life."