Lucid Culture

This is a story that’s been told many times over, one that will be familiar to anyone who stuck it out through the Greeks and Romans and then the Old Masters and made it to Art History 102: how two rival art critics, Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg not only made abstract expressionism a household word, but actually shaped the movement. To 21st century eyes, the idea of an art critic for a highbrow magazine like the Partisan Review having any influence whatsoever outside of the ivory tower of academia seems particularly quaint. Here at this site, we would be perfectly happy to get just a handful of people off the couch and away from the tv long enough to discover that there actually is such a thing as art. Yet as often as this story has been told, it’s hard to imagine it being told better than the current exhibit at the Jewish Museum that runs through September 21. It’s a quick, breezy show, one that won’t take longer than half an hour unless you are a passionate devotee of the style or the era, and in that case it could keep you rapt for the better part of an afternoon.

Pretty much everything on display here is either iconic or well-known: there are no Pollocks retrieved from anyone’s crumbling Long Island storage space. But the context here is remarkable and smartly curated, including correspondence, posters, media reportage and even a video of the infamous 1950s tv clip showing the chimpanzee J. Fred Muggs demonstrating impressive brush technique as he creates “modern art.” In an unpublished letter, Clyfford Still articulates through clenched teeth how wrongheaded a reviewer is. And the curators have done a good job underscoring how oblivious Greenberg, Rosenberg and their contemporaries were to pretty much any art other than painting (sculpture especially), and how they turned a blind eye to work by women and minorities.  

As can be expected, the big star here is De Kooning, particularly his famous Gotham News with its bright, urban colors over collage. Pollock is represented most strikingly by the familiar Convergence, vigorous even by his standards. Along with a handful of somewhat psychedelic, cartoonish Arshile Gorky works, there’s also a selection of sculpture. Perhaps the most striking piece of all is a work by Still, first described by the artist as a self-portrait, although he later retracted that title. Which is strange, because it’s so obviously self-referential, and self-obsessed, two qualities which perhaps best describe the whole of abstract expressionism. Yet there is nothing whatsoever maudlin about this almost pitiful stick figure against a black background, a tiny flame burning in its head, illuminating a big yellow box with clumsily outstretched arms.

A great deal of the exhibit, either directly or indirectly, relates to the two critics, whose rivalry grew as their tastes diverged. Greenberg comes across as a trendoid (and rightfully so!), jumping from one bandwagon to the next when he felt the slightest push of grass under his feet. Rosenberg, on the other hand, stands the test of time well. Focused (some might say obsessed) on how the experience of painting itself relates to art, he championed hard work and substance over fleeting fame. The two also differed on how they viewed their heritage: a passage from a Greenberg article stuffily relates an unease with what he felt were the stifling confines of American Jewish life. Rosenberg, on the other hand, embraced his Jewishness with characteristically ebullient wit. When met with the question, is there such a thing as Jewish art, he responded that a gentile would say, “Yes, there is Jewish art, and no, there is no Jewish art.” A Jew, on the other hand, would respond by asking, “What is the nature of Jewish art?” If Rosenberg is to be taken on face value, it comes as no surprise to learn from this exhibit that the greatest institutional exponents of abstract expressionism – many of whose foremost artists were Jews – were not museums, galleries or foundations, but synagogues, especially in New York and the surrounding area which continue to exhibit important works of art. Many similarly illuminating discoveries await the museumgoer who has a little time and an interest in this often mischaracterized and misunderstood period in American art history.

The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 5th Ave at 92nd St., enter on the street just east of the avenue. Museum hours are Saturday – Wednesday, 11:00 AM - 5:45 PM, Thursday 11:00 AM - 8:00 PM, closed Fridays and holidays. The exhibit runs through September 21.