Art and Culture

Rating:
Summary: Clement is a cool cat
Review: Clement Greenberg does an excellent job of explaining how the individual and society experience and identify art. His essays on avante-garde, kitsch, and modernist painting are especially interesting, although his socialist "tendencies" tend to undermine objective discussion and mix art and politics (not always inseperable anyway, though). If you read Greenberg, you should also check out T.J. Clark, who takes issue with many of Greenberg's ideas.

Rating:
Summary: Clement is a cool cat
Review: Clement Greenberg does an excellent job of explaining how the individual and society experience and identify art. His essays on avante-garde, kitsch, and modernist painting are especially interesting, although his socialist "tendencies" tend to undermine objective discussion and mix art and politics (not always inseperable anyway, though). If you read Greenberg, you should also check out T.J. Clark, who takes issue with many of Greenberg's ideas.

Rating:
Summary: The best art criticism you will ever read
Review: This is the best book of criticism of early/mid 20th C. art ever written, maybe the best one that ever will be written. it is the fundamantal text for the art of the period. Giving it 5 stars, or 10 stars, seems meaningless. If you want to know about the art of this time, look at the art, then read this book. After that you can get into the details.