Decoration is asked to be 'merely' pleasing, 'merely' embellishing, and the 'functional' logic of Modernism leaves no room, apparently, for such 'mereness.' This is part of the pity of Modernism, one of the sacrifices it enjoins... — Clement Greenberg Copy Share Image
It's as though aesthetic value, quality, could be preserved only by concentrating on 'absolute' or 'autonomous' art: thus on visual art... that held and moved and stirred the beholder as sheer decoration could not. — Clement Greenberg Copy Share Image
The avant-garde poet or artist tries in effect to imitate God by creating something valid solely on its own terms. — Clement Greenberg Copy Share Image
The peasant finds no "natural" urgency within himself that will drive him toward Picasso in spite of all difficulties. In the end the peasant… — Clement Greenberg Copy Share Image
The paradox in the evolution of French painting from Courbet to Cezanne is how it was brought to the verge of abstraction in and… — Clement Greenberg Copy Share Image
It has become apparent that art can have a startling impact without really being or saying anything startling — or new. The character itself… — Clement Greenberg Copy Share Image
Art is a matter strictly of experience, not of principles and what counts first and last in art is quality, all other things are… — Clement Greenberg Copy Share Image
Photography is the most transparent of the art mediums devised or discovered by man. It is probably for this reason that it proves so… — Clement Greenberg Copy Share Image
Where Picasso paints cause, Repin paints effect. Repin predigests art for the spectator and provides a short cut to the pleasure of art that… — Clement Greenberg Copy Share Image
A large picture can give us images of things, but a relatively small one can best re-create the instantaneous unity of nature as a… — Clement Greenberg Copy Share Image
The reality of art is disclosed only in experience, not in reflection upon experience. — Clement Greenberg Copy Share Image
You like it, that's all, whether it's a landscape or abstract. You like it. It hits you. You don't have to read it. The… — Clement Greenberg Copy Share Image
