In Defense of Abstract Expressionism

Author(s): T. J. Clark
Source: October, Vol. 69 (Summer, 1994), pp. 22-48
Published by: The MIT Press
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 In Defense ofAbstract
Expressionism

T. J. CLARK

1. We have come a certainwayfromAbstractExpressionism, and the question

of how we should understandour relationshipto it gets to be interestingagain.
Awe at its triumphsis long gone; but so is laughterat its cheap philosophy,or
distasteforitsheavybreathing,or boredomwithitssublimity, or resentmentat the
part it played in the Cold War.Not thatany of those feelingshave gone awayor
evershould,but thatit beginsto be clear thatnone of them-not even the sum of
them-amounts to an attitudeto the paintingin question. They are what artists
and criticsonce had because theydid not havean attitude-because something
stood in thewayof theirmakingAbstractExpressionisma thingof the past.

2. Not being able to make a previousmomentof high achievementpart of

the past-not to lose it and mourn it and if necessaryrevileit-is, forart under
the circumstancesof modernism,more or less synonymous withnot being able to
make art at all. Because ever since Hegel put the basic propositionof modernism
into words in the 1820s-that "art, considered in its highest vocation, is and
remainsforus a thingof the past"-art's being able to continue has depended on
its success in makingthatdictumspecificand punctual.That is to say,fixingthe
momentof art'slastfloweringat some point in the comparatively recentpast,and
discoveringthat enough remainsfromthisfinalefor a workof ironic or melan-
cholyor decadent continuationto seem possibleafterall. The "can'tgo on, willgo
on" syndrome.I thinkof the relationof nineteenth-century orchestraland cham-
ber music to the moment of Mozart and Beethoven; or of how nineteenth-and
twentieth-century literaturemanaged to continue living on the idea of "the
Romantics," or on the terminalimagesitfashionedof Baudelaire and Rimbaud,or
of the past that"Impressionism" wenton providingforFrenchpaintingdeep into
the twentiethcentury(till the deaths of Bonnard and Matisse),or of the feeding
of latermodernismson the mythof the Readymadeand the Black Square.
Hegel's dictumhad to be localized,thatis to say.And to point to the factthat
it can be localized, and thereforein a sense evaded, is, of course, to confirmthe
Hegelian thesis,not refuteit. For Hegel did not anticipateany literalceasing,or

OCTOBER 69, Summer

1994,pp. 23-48. ? 1994 TJ. Clark.

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 N't" *41
MrMTZATRIMM,
All.qI Pollock.
Jackson Phosphorescence.
1947.

je,
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Still.1949. 1949.
Clyfford

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In Defense
ofAbstract
Expressionism 25

even withering-away, of activitiescalling themselvesart. He just did not see that

they could possiblyremain the formin which men and women articulatedthe
relationsof mind and body to possibleworlds.Or I should say,articulatedthemto
good effect.What he did not see, as I understandit,was that the fulldepth and
implicationof thatinability-the inabilityto go on givingIdea and Worldsensu-
ous immediacy,of a kind that opened both to the play of practice-would itself
prove a persistent,maybe sufficient,subject. That was because he had a naive
hubrisabout philosophy,and because he could not detach himselffromthe sense
of world-historicalbeginningsand endingsthatcame withan adulthood passed in
the shadow of the FrenchRevolution.And otherreasonsbesides. He could never
have guessed thatthe disenchantmentof theworldwould take so long.
Modernism,as I conceive it,is the artof the situationHegel pointed to, but
itsjob turnsout to be to make the endlessnessof the endingbearable,bytimeand
again imaginingthat it has taken place-back there withBeethoven scratching
out Napoleon's name on the Eroica symphony, or withRimbaud gettingon the
boat at Marseilles.Everymodernismhas to have itsown proximateBlack Square.
Therefore our failure to see Jackson Pollock and ClyffordStill as ending
something,or our lack of a storyof what it is theywere ending, is considerably
more than a crisis in art criticismor art history.It means that for us art is no
longera thingof the past; thatis,we have no usable image of itsending,at a time
and place we could imagine ourselvesinhabiting,even if we would rathernot.
Thereforeartwill eternallyhold us withits glitteringeye. Not onlywill it forego
its role in the disenchantmentof the world,but it will accept the role that has
constantlybeen foisted upon it by its false friends:it will become one of the
forms,maybe theform,in whichthe worldis reenchanted.Witha magic no more
and no less powerful(here is my real fear) than that of the generalconjuror of
depth and desirabilityback into our world-that is, the commodityform.For the
one thingthe mythof the end of artmade possible was the maintainingof some
kind of distance between art's sensuous immediacyand thatof other (stronger)
claimantsto the same power.

3. Of course the situationI have been describingmaynot be remediable.It

be
may thatwe have lostAbstractExpressionismbecause we have lost modernism
toutcourt,and thereforethe need to imagineart altogether-whethercontinuing
or ending.I have mydoubts.But in anycase myobject in thisessayis limited.I am
going to mount a defense of Still and Pollock and others,couched in historical
terms.Whetherthe defensemakes any of them usable, in the sense I have been
proposing-whetherit makesthema thingof the past-depends on whetherwhat
I have to saytalliesin the long termwithartpractice.At the momentI see no rea-
son thatit should; but, equally,I findit hard to believe that the presentmythof
post-nesswillsustainitselfindefinitely.All thisremainsto be seen; it is not arthis-
torians'business.I onlybringit up because itwould be futileto pretendthatI do
not thinka greatdeal hingeson somebody,eventually, givingthispaintingitsdue.

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26 OCTOBER

4. To talk of interpretations, then. There has been a feelingin the air for
some time now thatwritingon AbstractExpressionismhas reached an impasse.
The variousresearchprogramsthatonlyyesterday seemed on thevergeof deliver-
ing new and strong accounts of it, and speaking to its place (maybe even its
function) in the world fictioncalled America,have run into the sand. Those who
believedthatthe answerto thelatterkindof questionwouldemergefroma history
of AbstractExpressionism'sbelongingto a certainCold War polity,withpatrons
and artworldinstitutions to match,have provedtheirpointand offendedall the
rightpeople. But the story,thoughgood and necessary,turnedout not to have the
sortof upshot forinterpretation thatthe storytellers had been hoping for.It was
one thingto answerthe question,"Whatare the circumstances in whicha certain
national bourgeoisie,in the pride of its victory, comes to wantsomethingas odd
and exotic as an avant-gardeof itsown?"It is anotherto speak to the implications
of that encounterfor the avant-gardeitself,and answerthe question, "To what
extentwas the meetingof class and artpracticein the later 1940s more thanjust
contingent?To what extent does AbstractExpressionismreallybelong, at the
deepestlevel-the levelof language,of procedure,of presuppositions aboutworld-
making-to the bourgeoisie who paid for it and took it on theirtravels?"
It is not
thatanswersto thesequestionsare simplyno longerbeingtriedfor.Workis getting
done. And certainlytheyseem to me the kindof questionsstillmostworthasking
of the paintingswe are lookingat-far moreso thangoingthroughthe motionsof
discoveringforthe umpteenthtime thathere,in JacksonPollock'sPhosphorescence
or Clyfford Still's 1949, "bymeans of theirsensoryreality,paintingsare made to
impede the impulseto constructan imaginaryobject,the eyebeing constantly led
back to the paintings'constitutory elements-line, color,plane."I Once upon a
time even thissemioticfairytale provokeda faintsensationof wonder.But that
was in another country.At least the tellersof the historicalstoryrecognizethat
theirresearcheshave landed themin a quandary;at leasttheyare awarethattheir
objects resistthem.The semiologists, it seems to me, are frozenin the triumphof
theirprearrangedmomentsofvision.

5. Sometimesthe wayout of thiskind of impassein historicalworkcomes

fromproposinganotherset of possibledescriptionsthatthe paintingsin question
mightbe seen to "comeunder"-making the proposal,especiallyin the beginning,
withno veryclear sense of whereit maylead. How would it alterthings,one asks,
whatsortsof new ordersin the objectswouldbe setup, ifwe chose to look at them
thisway?How differentwould theylook? Would theylook better?Or properly
worse?(Sometimesthe wayout of an impasseof understandinginvolvesputtingan
end to a false,or even true,cathexisof the object.Eliotand Leavissaid moreabout

1. jaune cadmium
Hubert Damisch, "L'&veildu regard,"in Fenitre ou lesdessousde la peinture
(Paris:
Seuil, 1984), p. 69. The subjecthere is Mondrian,but much the same verdictand formof wordsare
applied,byDamisch and others,to Pollock,Newman,Rothko,etc.

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 4?x,

777
wi?- NOW

Willem
deKooning.Collage. 1950.

Milton,and Feneon about Monet, than all Milton's and Monet's admirersput
together.)The thesesthatfolloware offeredin a similarspeculativespirit.

6. I thinkwe mightcome to describeAbstractExpressionistpaintingsbetter

ifwe took them above all to be vulgar.The word for us is pejorative,and to be
understood as such in the argumentsto come. But this should not present an
insuperableproblem,especiallyforthoseof us used to thinkingabout modernism.
Afterall, modernismhas veryoftenbeen understoodas derivingits power from
a range of characteristicsthat had previouslycome under the worstkind of
pejorativedescriptions-fromugliness,for example, or the merelyfragmentary
and disheveled;fromthe Material as opposed to the Ideal; fromthe plain and
limiting fact of flatness;from superficiality;from the low and the formless.
Nonethelesstherestillmaybe a slightfrisson to the idea thatthe formof Abstract
Expressionism's immersion in bassessewas vulgarity.It is not clear how sayingof
Willem de Kooning's Collagefor instance,or BradleyWalkerTomlin's All Souls'
Night,No. 2, thattheyare vulgaris to do anythingbesides denigratethem.That is
fine by me. Not to be certain for once that the negative termbrought on to
describe a modernistartifactcan ever be made to earn its positive keep-to
emerge transfigured fromthe fireof discourse-may mean we are on to some-
thing.To call an art work vulgaris obviously(at least fornow) to do something
more transgressive To have madeit vulgar-to have
than to call it low or informe.
had that be the qualityin it (the onlyquality) that raised it frominertnessand
had it speak a world-must have been difficult.Pollock's drip paintings,for

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28 OCTOBER

Walker
Left:Bradley Tomlin.
All Souls'
Night,No. 2. 1949.

Opposite Hans Hofmann.

left: The
Garden.1956.

AdolphGottlieb.
right:
Opposite Black,
Blue,Red. 1956.

..........

instance,seem to have been begun at the end of 1947 in a mood of triumphant

access to the gaudyand the overdone-Phosphorescence is typicalin thisregard,and
Ralph Manheim's title, beautiful as it is, somewhat naturalizes the painting's
essential tackiness.2The drip paintingscame to an end threeyearslater when
theirmakerdiscoveredthateven here,or especiallyhere (on the floor,flickinghis
Duco and aluminum),truevulgarity was beyondhis reach.

7. It is an advantage to the term "vulgar,"as far as I am concerned, that

discursively it pointstwoways-to the object itself,to some abjectnessor absurdity
in its verymakeup,some telltaleblemish,some atrociouslyvisual qualitythatthe
objectwillneverstop betrayinghoweverhard it tries;and to the object'sexistence
in a particularsocial world,fora set of tastesand stylesof individuality thathave
stillto be defined,but are somehowthere, in the word even beforeit is deployed.
Herein, I hope, lies the possibilityof class ascriptionin the case of paintingslike
Pollock's Cut-Outand de Kooning's Woman-the possibilityof seeing at last,and
even being able to describe,the waystheytake part in a particulartriumphand
disasterof the pettybourgeoisie.But I am comingto that.

8. In AbstractExpressionism,and here is the painting'scontinuing(maybe

intensifying) forus, a certainconstructionof the worldwe call "individu-
difficulty

2. On Manheim's titlingof worksfor Pollock's firstshow at BettyParsons's,see Ellen Landau,

Pollock(New York:Abrams,1989), pp. 169-77.
Jackson

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In Defense
ofAbstract
Expressionism 29

ili
iiii~i~
iiiiiii
i
~ii

?i ....

ality"is revealedin its true,thatis to saycontingent,vulgarity.

And so is painting;
or rather,paintingslike Hans Hofmann'sTheGardenand Adolph Gottlieb'sBlack,
Blue,Red,done under the signor spell of such a construction,by "individuals"in
searchof the gratifications and austeritiesitprovides.

9. I should tryto definemyterms.It willnot be easy.The entriesunder the

word "vulgar"and its cognates in the Oxford EnglishDictionaryrevel,reallya bit
vulgarly,in the slippingand slidingof meaning over the centuries,and in the
elusiveness(but for thatveryreason the intensity)of the panics and snobberies
builtinto them.The threequotationsthatseem to me to help mostwithwhatwe
Jane Austen in 1797, in Senseand Sensibility,
are looking at are, first, turningon
"thevulgarfreedomand folly"of the elder sisterin the novel and declaringit "left
her no recommendation"-I thinkit was the freedomeven more than the folly
thatAustenobjected to,and needed theword"vulgar"to dispatch.Then, Matthew
Arnoldin 1865, makingthe linkbetweenvulgarityand expressivenessthatpartic-
ularlyconcernsus here: "Saugrenuis a rathervulgarFrenchword,but like many
other vulgarwords,veryexpressive."And lastly,George Eliot, quoted in Cross's
Lifeas sayingof Byron,in a letterof 1869, thathe seemed to her "themostvulgar-
mindedgenius thateverproduced a greateffectin literature."Everyonewill have
his or her own favoritecandidate-Still, de Kooning, Kline, Hofmann,Pollock
whenthingswentbestforhim-for thepropersubstitution in the case ofpainting.

10. Scanningthe columns,the eye stopsat OED usage 13: "havinga common

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30 OCTOBER

and offensively mean character;coarselycommonplace;lackingin refinement or

good taste; uncultured, ill-bred."Of actions, manners,features, recorded from
1643; of personsfrom1678; of language from1716; of mind or spiritfrom1764.
The keyidea fromour point of viewis of vulgarity on the partof those
as betrayal,
who byrightsoughtto be above it.The OED does not seem quite cognizantof this
shift,though it providesthe evidence for its takingplace. It is there alreadyin
Coleridge'scomplainingin 1833 of the "sordidvulgarity of the leadersof the day!"
and it becomes a nineteenth-century commonplace. Ruskin,in volume fiveof
ModernPainters, has a great climacticchapter,"Of Vulgarity,"
struggling withthe
shades of Quilp and Chadband and Mrs. Gamp, and of Dickens himselfbehind
them,and speakingto his deepestfearsand hopes forart.The noun "vulgarian"-
"a vulgarperson;freq.,a well-to-door rich person of vulgarmanners"--iscoined
around 1800. I guessitis whatRuskinand GeorgeEliotmosthavein mind.

11. I am proposingthatone main kindof intensityin AbstractExpressionism

is its engagementwiththe dangers and falsehoodsjust catalogued. And whatis
special about AbstractExpressionism-what marksit offfromall other mod-
ernisms-is thatthe engagementis withthevulgaras opposed to the "popular"or
"low."I thinkwe should understandthe "popular"in nineteenth-and twentieth-
centuryart as a series of figuresof avoidanceof the vulgar; that is, figuresof
avoidance of art's actual belongingto the pathos of bourgeoistaste,a perpetual
shiftingand conjuringof kinds of simplicity, directness,naivete,sentimentand
sentimentality, emotional and material force,in spite of everythingabout art's
actual place and function that put such qualities beyond its grasp. Abstract
Expressionismdoes littleor no such conjuring.That is whatmakesit hard to bear.
We are used to an artthatalwayssets offagain in searchof the trueunderlyingthe
tawdry, and wherethe tawdrymaydivulgethe true (to the artist)just because the
tawdrinessis someone else's, out there in the mass or the margin.But Abstract
Expressionismdoes not go elsewherefor its language, and at its best (its most
appalling) it seemsin searchof thefalseunderlyingthevehement,wherethepoint
is thatcheap vehemence,or easydelectation,are whatpaintingnow is-the only
values,the onlyformsof individuality, thatit can stagewithoutfaking.Onlythose
AbstractExpressionistcanvases will do that are trulyconsumed withtheirown
emptyintensity, withpaintingas posturing,witha ludicrousbignessand lushness
and generality.(Pollock's big paintingsof 1950 are no longerludicrousand self-
consumingenough; theyhave become almost comfortablewiththeirscale and
degree of generalization of touch; the true is leaking back into the paintings,
givingthem depth and coherence, displacingthe great emptyperformatives of
1948 and 1949. This again is one wayof sayingwhythe big paintingscould not
be continued.)

12. Nobodywould expect the termsand issuesI am claimingas mostdeeply

AbstractExpressionism'sown to be simplypresentin the discourseof the time,

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In Defense
ofAbstract
Expressionism 31

any more than the issues of flatnessand modernity, say,were foreven the best of
Manet's critics.But one would at least expect to findthe tracesin discourseof the
issues being avoided. Here is a New York critic in 1951, writingof an artisthe
greatlyadmires:
In thiscase the backgroundis withoutquestion the mostoutrageously
overwhelming the artist has ever contrived. Inspired by the most
flagrantand bombasticFrenchBaroque wallpaper,[he has] intensified
to a maximumits brownand orange arabesque whichsurroundsareas
of the harshestblue in the centersofwhichclusterpinkand red roses....
All thesegratuitousincidentssuperimposedon the wall and floorserve
to break up and confusethe patternson these surfacesso thatthe eye
can find no securityeven in the repetition of ornamental motif-a
comfortaffordedin ... earliercompositions...
Visuallythe DecorativeFigureis a garish,violent,and upsettingpic-
ture. The rathermild problemswhich [the painter] had been posing
forhimselfduringthe previousfiveyearsare here suddenlyexacerbated
almostto the point of burlesque.Luxe,calmeetvoluptihave disappeared
and in theirplaces discomfort, excitement,and tensionreign.The ...
SeatedNude of the year before had expressed [the painter's] rebellion
againstease and softness;thisbig odalisque adds a revoltagainstcharm
and good taste.It representsa triumphof art over factitiousvulgarity.
Yetbecause the pictureis so clearlyan act ofwillin a fieldof artifice,the
victoryseemsPyrrhic.3
The last two sentences in particular-"It representsa triumphof art over facti-
tious vulgarity.Yet because the picture is so clearlyan act of will in a field of
artifice,the victoryseems Pyrrhic"-seem to me to provide the terms for a
descriptionof AbstractExpressionism.The keyquestion, of course (which this
criticunderstandablyskirtsround) is whetherthe victoryover vulgarityis meant
to seem Pyrrhic-whetherthe hollownessof the victoryis whatthe picturewants
to figuremost urgently.But of course it is rightand proper that even though
these wordswere writtenat the heightof AbstractExpressionism,and fromthe
veryseat of the movement'sinstitutionalpower-by AlfredH. Barr in a MOMA
catalogue-they preciselycould not be writtenof Gottlieb or Hofmann or de
Kooning, but only of Matisse, of his Figuredecorativesurfond ornemental done a
quarterof a centuryearlier.

13. I realizethatitis stillnot clearwhatBarror I mean bytheword"vulgarity"

as applied to paintings.And I do not thinkit everwillbe. The word is opaque: it
points,as Ruskinknew,to a deep dilemmaof bourgeoisculture;it is as close to an

3. AlfredBarr,Matisse:His Artand His Public(New York:Museum of ModernArt,1951), p. 214.

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32 OCTOBER

ultimatetermof ethicsor metaphysicsas thatculturemaybewill ever throwup.

"Twoyearsago,"ends Ruskin'schapter"On Vulgarity"in ModernPainters,
when I was firstbeginningto workout the subject,and chattingwith
one of mykeenest-mindedfriends(Mr. Brett,the painterof the Val
d'Aostain theExhibitionof 1859), I casuallyaskedhim,"Whatis vulgari-
ty?"merelyto see whathe would say,not supposingit possibleto get a
sudden answer.He thoughtforabout a minute,then answeredquietly,
"It is merelyone of the formsof Death." I did not see the meaningof
the replyat the time;but on testingit,foundthatit meteveryphase of
connectedwiththe inquiry,and summedthe truecon-
the difficulties
clusion.Yet,in orderto be complete,itoughtto be made a distinctive as
wellas conclusivedefinition;showingwhatformofdeathvulgarity is; for
death itselfis not vulgar,but only death mingledwithlife. I cannot,
however,constructa short-wordeddefinitionwhich will include all
the minor conditions of bodily degeneracy;but the term "deathful
selfishness"willembraceall the mostfataland essentialformsof mental
vulgarity.4
I do not bring this passage of Ruskin on in hopes of solving our problem of
definition,but more because it shows (more clearlythan anyonenowadayswould
dare to) whatthe problemis-what terriblecocktailofclassascriptionsand bodily
disgustthe word "vulgar"is an emptycontainerfor,and how fataland essentialis
the slidingwithinit betweena handyformof class racismand a general sense of
class doom. Vulgarityis foulnessand degeneracy;it is a "dulnessof bodilysense,"
"allwhichcomes of insensibility.""The black battle-stainon a soldier'sface is not
vulgar,but the dirtyface of a housemaid is."5But Brett'sdictum is ultimately
impatientof such distinctions.We are all housemaidsnow.

14. "Vulgarityis merelyone of the formsof Death." Bewareof takingBrett's

dictumtoo literallyin the case of AbstractExpressionism,and above all beware
of converting it back into some ridiculous (vulgar) retelling of Abstract
Expressionists'life stories.I thinkthere maybe some kind of fatal connection
between this painting'sdeep vulgarityand its incessantcourtingof Death; but
thatis not to be understoodas a biographicalpropositionbut a formalone. It is a
wayof thinkingagain about Pollock's or Still'srepetitioncompulsion,theircon-
stant (fruitful)drive toward emptiness, endlessness, the nonhuman and the
inorganic."Perhapsthe last paradox theseworkscontain is thatof death,"writes
the novelistParker Tylerof Pollock's drip paintingssome time earlyin 1950,
beforethe lastshowof themat BettyParsons's:

4. John Ruskin,ModernPainters(Boston and New York:Colonial PressCompany,n.d.), vol. 5, pp.

347-49.
5. Ibid., p. 344.

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In Defense
ofAbstract
Expressionism 33

For in being a conception of ultimate time and space, the labyrinth

of infinity,Jackson Pollock's latest work goes beyond the ordinary
processes life-however these mightbe visualizedand recognized-
of
into an absolute being whichmustcontain death as well as life.Hence
the spatial distinctions achieved by lines and spots of color within
Pollock's rectanglesgo as much beyond mere optical vision as seems
possible to painting....
JacksonPollock has put the concept of the labyrinthat an infinite
and unreachable distance,a distance beyond the stars-a non-human
distance.... If one feltvertigobeforePollock'sdifferentiations
of space,
then trulyone would be lost in the abyssof an endless definitionof
being. One would be enclosed, trappedby the labyrinthof the picture-
space. But we are safelylooking at it, seeing it steadilyand seeing it
whole, froma point outside. Only man,in his paradoxical role of the
superman, can achieve such a featof absolute contemplation:the sight
of an image of space in whichhedoesnotexist.6
It would be easy to make funof this.Its metaphysicsare vulgar.But the termsand
the tone seem to me as close as Pollock got to appropriatecriticismin his own life-
time.It is fitting,
again, thatthesewere paragraphsdeleted fromTyler'sarticlein
1950 byRobertGoldwater,editorof the MagazineofArt.They onlysurviveat all as
part of Pollock criticismbecause the artistseems to have been givena typescript
bythewriterat the time,and keptit in his files.

15. Maybe the Death in Brett'sdictumis simplyor mainlythat of painting.

Maybeit alwayswas,forBrettand Ruskinas much as Pollock and ParkerTyler.

16. Death makes a bad metaphor.Picturesthatsummonit up too readily-

Newman'spassim,Rothko'sfrom1957 on-get to look Gothic before theirtime.
That we are meant to take the portentousnessas ultimatelyhaving to do with
"painting"or "signification"or some such only makes mattersworse. Death is
enlistedto makevulgaritylook deep.

17. The troublewithBarnettNewmanis thathe was nevervulgarenough,or

onlyvulgaron paper.

18. The great Rothkosare those that everybodylikes,fromthe early 1950s

mainly;the ones that revelin the new formula'scheap effects,the ones where a

6. Parker Tyler,unedited text of "'JacksonPollock: The Infinite Labyrinth,"in Archives of

American Art,Pollock Papers 3048, pp. 548-49. (The edited textwas published in MagazineofArt,
March 1950.) My thanksto Michael Leja forpointingme to the deleted paragraphsand sortingout
the circumstancesof theirdisappearance.For fulldiscussionof the text(s),see Michael Leja, Reframing
Abstract (New Haven and London: Yale University
Expressionism Press,1993), pp. 313-16.

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34 OCTOBER

hectoringabsoluteof self-presenceis maintainedin the face of absence,void,no-

thing,devouringsimplicity: withvulgarity-a vulgarfulsomenessof reds, pinks,
purples,oranges, lemons, lime greens,powder-puff whites-acting as the trans-
formbetween the two possibilitiesof reading. The Birthof Tragedy redone by
Renoir.

19. "Whentheyare hung in tightphalanx,as he would have themhung,and

flooded withthe lighthe demands thattheyreceive,the tyranny of his ambition
to suffocateor crushall who stand in his waybecomes fullymanifest.... It is not
withoutsignificance,therefore,that the surfacesof these paintingsreveal the
gestures of negation, and that their means are the devices of seduction and
assault.Not I, but himself,has made it clear thathis workis of frustration,resent-
ment and aggression. And that it is the brightnessof death that veils their
bloodless febrilityand clinicalevacuations":Clyfford Stillto SidneyJanis,April4,
1955.7This is verylike Fen0on on Monet: mean-spirited, partial,and tendentious,
but somehowforthatveryreason (because it stepsout of the circleof deference
foronce) the bestcriticismRothkoeverreceived.

20. And so to the question of class. "Whileformalanalysis,"saysAdorno in

his Introductionto theSociologyofMusic,"was learningto trace the most delicate
ramificationsof [a work's] manufacture,. . . the method of deciphering the
specificsocial characteristicsof music has lagged behind pitifullyand mustbe
largelycontentwithimprovisations."8 Quite so, and maybeimprovisationwillturn
out to beits method. But equally-this is Adorno in the same paragraph-"If we
listento Beethovenand do not hear anythingof the revolutionary bourgeoisie-
not the echo of its slogans,the need to realize them,the cryforthattotalityin
whichreason and freedomare to have theirwarrant-we understandBeethoven
no better than does the listenerwho cannot followhis pieces' purelymusical
content,the innerhistorythathappens to theirthemes."

21. What remainsto be thoughtabout AbstractExpressionism(though the

thoughthaunts everythingwrittenon the subject, especially those textsmost
anxious to repressit) is the painting'splace in a determinateclass formation;one
which,thoughlong prepared,took on the specifictrappingsof culturalpowerin
the yearsafter1945. I said its place in a determinateclass formation-not in a
State apparatus or a newlyimprovised systemof avant-gardepatronage or a
museum/artworld superstructure.Not that the latterare irrelevant.But they

7. Archivesof American Art,Alfonso Ossorio papers, quoted in James Breslin,MarkRothko, A

Biography (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,1993), p. 344. Copies of the letterseem
to have been circulatedat the time,eitherbyStillorJanis.
8. Theodor Adorno, Introduction ofMusic (New York:Seabury Press, 1976), p. 62
to theSociology
(translationslightlymodified).

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 ofAbstract
In Defense Expressionism 35

cannot be what we mean, fundamentally, when we talk about a certain

representationalpractice inhering in the culture of a class. We mean that the
practice somehowparticipatesin thatclass's whole constructionof a "world."We
are talkingof overlapand mutualfeedingat the levelof representationalpractice,
at the level of symbolicproduction (ideology). When we say that the novel is
bourgeois,the keyfactsin the case are not eighteenth-century subscriptionlists
or even the uses earlyreadersmade of YoungWerther.

22. Clement Greenberg begins a review of an exhibition of Courbet at

Wildenstein'sin January1949 by sayingthat "Bosch, Brueghel,and Courbet are
unique in thattheyare greatartistswho expresswhatmaybe called a pettybour-
geois attitude."9Like Barr,he seems to me to be avertinghis eyes fromPollock
and ClyffordStill. What is new in theircase, of course, is that now a particular
(hybrid)formof pettybourgeois culture-I am includingin the term"culture"a
set of politicaland economic compromiseformations,withmythsand duplicities
to match,as well as a set of established stylesof personhood-has become the
form,the onlyviable medium, of bourgeois class power.It is not that the petty
bourgeoisiein America has power,but thatitsvoice has become, in the yearsafter
1945, the only one in which power can be spoken; in it, and only in it, can be
heard the last echoes of whatthe bourgeoisiehad once aspired to be-"the echo
of its slogans,the need to realize them,the cryforthattotalityin whichfreedom
[no longerreason] is to have itswarrant."0o

9. Clement Greenberg, The Collected Essays and Criticism(Chicago and London: Universityof
Chicago Press,1986), vol. 2, p. 275, fromTheNation,January8, 1949. A monthlater,on February19,
GreenbergreviewsGottlieband Pollock. "I feel thatGottliebshould make the factof his powermuch
more obvious,"he writes(ibid.,p. 285), thoughhe welcomesthe painter'sTotemicFission (mychoice for
the perfectAbstractExpressionisttitle),AshesofPhoenix, and Hunterand Huntedas pointingin the right
direction. His reviewof the Pollock show at BettyParsons's is that in which he takes NumberOne,
1948-"this huge baroque scrawlin aluminum,black, white,madder and blue"--as finalproof that
Pollock has become a major artist.The words"baroque scrawl"seem to me to be feelingforthe quali-
tiesin Pollock'sworkthatI am insistingon here.
10. This is not the place to enterinto the difficulties
involvedin making,and sustaining,the distinc-
tion between bourgeois and pettybourgeois as termsof class analysis.ObviouslyI believe the distinc-
tion is real, and I do not want my talk in the text of class "cultures"and "formations"to give the
impressionthatI do not believe the distinctionis ultimatelyone of economic power.A bourgeois,for
me, is someone possessingthe wherewithalto intervenein at least some of the importanteconomic
decisionsshapinghis or her own life (and those of others).A bourgeois,forme, is someone expecting
(reasonably)to pass on thatpowerto the kids.A pettybourgeoisis someone who has no such leverage
or security,and certainlyno such dynasticexpectations,butwho nonethelessidentifieswholeheartedly
withthose who do. Of course this means that everythingdepends, fromage to age and moment to
moment,on the particularformsin whichsuch identificationcan take place. The historyof the petty
bourgeoisiewithincapitalismis thereforea historyof manners,symbols,subcultures,"lifestyles," neces-
sarilyfixatedon the surfaceof social life. (Chapters3 and 4 of myPaintingofModernLifetryto begin
such a historyfor the late nineteenthcentury.The material on "Modern Man discourse" in Leja's
Reframing Abstract Expressionism strikesme as providingsome of the elementsfora parallel description
of the 1940sand '50s.)

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36 OCTOBER

23. AbstractExpressionism,I wantto say,is the styleof a certainpettybour-

geoisie's aspiration to aristocracy,to a totalizingculturalpower.It is the art of
that moment when the pettybourgeoisie thinksit can speak (and its masters
allow it to speak) the aristocrat'sclaim to individuality.
Vulgarityis the formof
thataspiration.

24. Or could we say:AbstractExpressionismis the formof the pettybour-

geoisie's aspirationto aristocracy,at that fatefulmomentwhen the bourgeoisie
itselfno longerso aspires;when the pettybourgeoishas to standin fora hidden-
nay,vanished-bourgeois elite. (Of course we are dealing here with two class
formations, two fictionsor constructions,not two brute sociological entities.We
are dealingwithformsof representation-whichis not to saythatthe kindof rep-
resentationaldoubling described here does not have specific,sometimesbrutal,
sociological effects.McCarthyismwas one of them, in which the bourgeois
Frankenstein was fora whilereallyparalyzedbyitspettybourgeoisMonster.)

25. Vulgarity,then (to returnto our subject),is the necessaryformof that

individualityallowed the pettybourgeoisie.Onlythatpaintingwillengage and sus-
tain our attentionwhichcan be seen to recognize,and in some sense to articulate,
thislimitedconditionof its own rhetoric.Maybeitwillalwaysbe a paintingwhich
strugglesto valorize this condition quand mime-forhere we touch, as Adorno
never tired of tellingus, on some constitutive(mayberegrettable)link between
artand an ethicsof reconciliationor transcendence-butwhatwe shallvalue most
in the paintingis the ruthlessnessof (self-)exposure,the courtingof bathos,the
unapologetic ifthereis one, mustalwaysalso be Pyrrhic.
banality.The victory,

26. You see now whythe concept "vulgarity" has more and more the notion
of betrayalwritteninto it as the nineteenthcenturygoes on. For the bourgeoisie's
greattragedyis thatit can onlyretainpowerbyallowingits inferiorsto speak for
it,givingthem the leftoversof the cryfortotality, and steelingitselfto hear the
ludicrousmishmashtheymake of it-to hear and pretendto approve,and maybe
in the end to approvewithoutpretending.

27. If thisframeof referenceforAbstractExpressionismturnsout to workat

all, one of the thingsit oughtto be best at is a rethinkingof the stale comparison

There is no need to be oversubtleabout this.Sometimessymbolsand lifestyles stillhave class

inscribedon themin lettersten feettall.Whatcould be more disarmingly bourgeois,in the old sense,
section on an airplane crossingthe Atlantic?And what more dismallypettybour-
than the first-class
geois than coach? (Those in business-or whatmyfavoriteairlinecalls Connoisseur-class would take
a bit more ad hocclass sorting,some going up, some going down.A lot depends on particularstylesof
corporate reward to middle management,for instance,whichvaries fromcountryto countryand
phase to phase of the businesscycle.)Anyway, the roughbalance of numbersin thiscase seems to me
forthe balance of numbersin theworldat large.
quite instructive

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In Defense
ofAbstract
Expressionism 37

ParisbyNight.1959.
AsgerJorn.

betweenAmericaand Europe. European paintingafterthe war,alas, comes out of

a verydifferentset of class formations.Vulgarityis not its problem.In AsgerJorn,
for example-to turnfor a momentto the greatestpainter of the 1950s-what
paintingconfrontsas its limitconditionis alwaysrefinement. PaintingforJornis a
of
process coming to terms withthe factthathowever this set of qualitiesmaybe
tortured,exacerbated,or erased theystillend up being what(European) painting
is; and the torture,exacerbation, and erasure are discovered in practice to be
refinement,that is, the formsrefinementpresentlytakes if a painter is good
enough; theyare whatrefinespaintingto a newpreciousnessor dross (it turnsout
thatpreciousnessand drossare the same thing).

28. In callingJornthe greatestpainterof the 1950s I meant to saynothing

about the general healthof paintingin Europe at the time.On the contrary.The
cliches in the books are true.Jorn's reallywas an endgame. Vulgarity,on the
other hand, back on the other side of the Atlantic,turned out to be a way of
keeping the corpse of paintinghideouslyalive-while coquettingall the timewith
Death.

29. An AsgerJorn can be garish, florid,tasteless,forced, cute, flatulent,

overemphatic;it can neverbe vulgar.It just cannot preventitselffroma tamper-
ing and framingof its desperateeffectswhichpulls them back into the realm of
painting,ironizesthem,declaresthemdone in fullknowledgeof theiremptiness.
American painting,by contrast-and preciselythat American painting that is

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38 OCTOBER

closestto the European, done byEuropeans,byGermansand Dutchmensteeped

in the traditiontheyare exitingfrom--doesnot ironizeand willnevermake the
(false) declarationthatthe game is up. Hofmannand de Kooning,the closerthey
get toJorn'svocabulary,areJorn'sdirectopposites.

30. It is my hope that conceivingof AbstractExpressionismas vulgarwill

lead to a new set of discriminationsbetweenparticularpainterswithinthe group,
and between momentsin the workof a single artist.I have alreadyreferredto
one or two such possibilities-forinstance,the differencebetweenPollock'sdrip
paintingsin 1947 and 1948 and theirfinalappearance in 1950. I have tried also
to givea preliminarysense of the new priorities,and the new kindsof belonging
togetherunder the general (too capacious) banner, by means of the pictures
accompanyingmytext.Let me saya wordor twomore on thissubject.
Gottlieb,you willhave noticed,emergesas the greatand implacable maestro
of AbstractExpressionism.He is Byronto Greenberg'sGeorge Eliot-the most
vulgar-minded genius thatever produced a greateffectin oils. A Mantovanior a
LawrenceWelk. Charlie Parkerplayinginsolentvariationson the theme of "I'd
Like to Get You on a Slow Boat to China"-feeling fora wayto retrieve,and make
properlyunbearable,the song's contemptforthoseitwaswrittenfor.Gottliebis at
his bestwhen he goes straightforthe cosmologicaljugular,straightforthe pages
of Timeor Life-his worldson firelike atomic-ageparodies of Lissitzky'sStoryof
TwoSquares,ghastlyin theirbeautificationof destruction.

31. Certainmomentsand sequences of workin AbstractExpressionismthat

everyone, then and since, agrees to have been a turningpoint for the new
paintingbegin,in thislight,to make a bit more sense. For example,de Kooning's
Womanseries and the vehemenceof Greenberg'sreactionto it. What Greenberg
was recoilingfrom,I think,is the waychoosingWoman as his subjectallowed de
Kooning to extrudea qualityof perceptionand handlingthat stood at the very
heartof his aestheticand fixit onto an Other,a scapegoat."The blackbattle-stain
on a soldier'sface is not vulgar,but the dirtyface of a housemaid is." For "dirty
face of a housemaid" read "perfectsmile of the model in the Camels advertise-
ment."Greenbergdrew back fromthis not, need I say it, out of concern at de
Kooning's misogyny,but froman intuitionthat such splittingand projection
would make it impossibleforde Kooning'spaintingto go on sustainingthe right
pitch of tawdriness,ironic facility,
overweeningself-regard. I thinkhe was right.
Only when de Kooning found a way to have the vulgarity his own again-or
be
to
rather, half-project it onto cliche landscape or townscapeformatsthatwere
transparently mere props-did he regain the measure of meretriciousnesshis art
needed. The male braggadocio,thatis to say,had to be unfocused ifhe was to paint
up a storm.It had to be a mannerin searchof an object,and somehowaggrieved
at not findingone. Whatwas wantedwas general paranoia, not particularwar of
the sexes.

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In Defense
ofAbstract
Expressionism 39

.
........

i;3vy:

aipp
:
:-:::-Mi i

...
......

Under and Over. 1959.

AdolphGottlieb.

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40 OCTOBER

32. Vulgarityis gendered, of course. At the time we are examining, it

belonged (as a disposableproperty)mainlyto men, or more precisely,to hetero-
sexual men. Not thatthismeantthatthe artdone under itsauspiceswas closed to
reading fromother points of view.What Cecil Beaton and AlfonsoOssorio and
ParkerTylerand FrankO'Hara did to Pollock,withor withoutPollock's permis-
sion, would have to be part-sometimes, as I have said, a central part-of any
defensiblehistoryof the New YorkSchool. It seems importantthat,apart from
Greenberg, the strongestearly readings of Pollock's work (the strongest,not
necessarilythe best) all came fromgay men. Namuth's filmsand photographs
partake of the same homosocial atmosphere. Perhaps the deep reason why
Greenbergwas neverable to realizehis cherishedprojectof a book on Pollockwas
thathe foundno wayto contain,or put to use, the erotichero worshipthatsings
in the prose of his shorterpieces.11

33. I do not mean to give the impression,bythe way,thatthe set of isssuesI

am pointingto neverappeared in criticaldiscourseat the time,or did so onlyin
utterlydisplaced form.Now and again theysurfacedirectly,but whatis striking
when thathappens is how the writerseems not to knowwhatto do withthe issues
and terms once they show up. The termsare embarrassing. Greenberg, for
instance,had the followingto sayabout Clyfford Still'scolor and painthandlingin
hisgreatessay"'American-Type' Painting,"publishedin PartisanReviewin 1955:
I don't knowhow much consciousattentionStillhas paid to Monetand
Impressionism[Greenberghas just been musingon the powerwithin
AbstractExpressionismof "an art like the late Monet's, which in its
time pleased banal taste and still makes most of the avant-garde
withpopular taste,
shudder"],but his.., .art likewisehas an affiliation
thoughnot by any means enough to make it acceptable to it. Still'sis
the firstreallyWhitmanesquekind of paintingwe have had, not only
because it makes large,loose gestures... butjust as much because, as
Whitman'spoetryassimilated,withvaryingsuccess,large quantitiesof
stalejournalisticand oratoricalprose,so Still'spaintingis infusedwith
thatstale,prosaickindof paintingto whichBarnettNewmanhas given
the name of "buckeye."Though littleattentionhas been paid to it in

11. It would be too easy to catalogue the more flagrantphrases here-"His emotion startsout
pictorially;it does not have to be castratedand translatedin orderto be put into a picture,"etc.-and
the resultwould inevitablyhave the flavorof Freudian "now-it-can-be-told." Whereas the point is the
obviousnessof the verballove affair, and the factthatthatveryobviousness-whichis integral,I think,
to Greenberg'sinsightsand descriptionsfrom1943 to 1955-was only allowable (or manageable)
when it went along with a no-holds-barred, take-it-or-leave-it tone about everything-thetone
Greenbergperfectedas a writerof fortnightly columnsand occasional aphoristicsurveys.In a book-
even one as briefand essayisticas Greenberg'son Mir6 had been-there would have been too obvious
a seam betweenthe documentarymode (Greenberg,understandably, was more and more anxious to
disinterPollock fromunder a mountain of biographicalfilth)and the awe at Pollock's energyand
maleness.

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In Defense
ofAbstract
Expressionism 41

print, "buckeye"is probablythe most widelypracticed and homoge-

neous kind of paintingseen in the Westernworld today.... "Buckeye"
painters,as faras I am aware,do landscapes exclusivelyand workmore
or less directlyfromnature.By pilingdrypaint-though not exactlyin
impasto-they tryto capturethe brillianceof daylight,and the process
of paintingbecomes a race between hot shadowsand hot lightswhose
invariable outcome is a livid, dry,sour picture with a warm,brittle
surface that intensifiesthe acid fireof the generallypredominating
reds,browns,greens,and yellows."Buckeye"landscapes can be seen in
GreenwichVillage restaurants(Eddie's Aurora on WestFourthStreet
used to collect them), SixthAvenue picturestores (there is one near
Eighth Street), and in the WashingtonSquare outdoor shows. ... I
cannot understandfullywhy[these effects]should be so universaland
so uniform,or the kindofpaintingculturebehind them.
Still,at anyrate,is the firstto have put "buckeye"effectsinto seri-
ous art.These are visiblein the the frayeddead-leafedges thatwander
down the marginsor across the middle of so manyof his canvases,in
the uniformly dark heat of his color,and in a dry,crustypaint surface
(like any "buckeye"painter,Still seems to have no faithin diluted or
thinpigments).Such thingscan spoil his pictures,or make themweird
in an unrefreshing way,but when he is able to succeed with,or in spite
of them,it representsbut the conquestbyhigh artof one more area of
experience,and itsliberationfromKitsch.12
There is a lot going on here, and no one interpretationwill do itjustice (the
tangentsand redundanciesin the text,whichI have leftout forthe sake of brevity,
are actuallyvitalto itsdetective-story tone). But whatI see Greenbergdoing essen-
is
tially struggling to describe and come to termswith a specificarea of petty
bourgeois taste. He rolls out the place names and pieces of New York City
geography with a cultural explorer'srelish,all the betterto be able to plead class
ignorance in the end-"I cannot understandfully... the kind of paintingculture
behind them."Readers of Greenbergwill know that the final enlistmentof the
wordkitsch is heavilyloaded. Kitschequals vulgarity, roughly.In Greenberg'soriginal
Trotskyite scheme of things the word had strongclass connotations.But 1955 is
too late, by severalyears,for Greenbergto be willingto pursue this any further
than he does. It is interesting(thisis myargument)thathe pursuesit at all-that
Still's paintingseeminglyforceshim to thinkagain, at some length,about high
art's courting of banality.And he is in no two minds, at this point, about the
importanceof such a tactic,for all its risk.The next sentence afterthe one on
Still and kitschreads as follows:"Still'sart has a special importanceat this time
because it showsabstractpaintinga wayout of its ownacademicism."

12. Greenberg,Collected
Essaysand Criticism,
vol. 3, pp. 230-31 (fromPartisanReview,
Spring 1955).

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 Still.Untitled.1951-52.
Clyfford

This sentenceis alteredout of all recognitionin the versionof "'American-

Type' Painting"Greenbergput in his book Artand Culturesix yearslater.13All of
the sectionon Stillis givenheavysurgery.The word kitsch giveswayto "one more
depressed area of art,"where surely"depressed" exactly wrongword.Kitsch
is the
is manic. Above all it is rigidwiththe exaltationof art.It believesin art the way
artistsare supposed to-to the point of absurdity, to the pointwhere the cult of
art becomes a new Philistinism.That is the aspect of kitsch which Still gets

13. See ClementGreenberg,Artand Culture(Boston: Beacon Press,1961), pp. 223-24. Part of the
reason for the changes was the vehemence of Still's and Newman'sreaction to Greenberg'soriginal
wording.See Greenberg'sreplyto a typicalblastfromStill (dated April 15, 1955,whichsuggeststhat
Still's original lettermay have been sent offat much the same time as the one to SidneyJanis on
Rothko), quoted in ed. CliffordRoss, Abstract Expressionism: and Critics(New York:Abrams,
Creators
1990), pp. 251-53. The term"buckeye"is one of the main bones of contentionin the exchange. Still
suspectsthatGreenbergborrowednot onlythe termfromNewman (whichGreenbergacknowledges)
but also itsapplicationto hiswork.Greenbergsaysno. "Barneywas the firstone I heard name a certain
kind of paintingas buckeye,but he did not apply the termto yours.When I, some time later,told
BarneythatI thoughttherewas a relationbetweenbuckeyeand yourpainting,or rathersome aspects
of it, he protestedvehementlyand said yourstuffwas too good for that" (p. 252). Since Greenberg
regularlygets told offthese daysforbeing waspishand superiorabout the AbstractExpressionists(as
conversationalists in retrospect,it is worthpointingto the well-nighsaintlypatience
and letterwriters)
ofhis 1955 dealingswithStillon the rampage.
MarninYoungpointsout to me thatin his spiritedattackon Stillin TheNation,"Art,"January 6,
1964, Max Kozloffseizes on Greenberg'scomparisonto "GreenwichVillage landscapists"(he quotes a
fewsentencesfromthe Artand Culturetext) and goes on: "Criticalattemptsto portray[Still] as an
artistwho burstsforthinto a new freedom,or as an exponentof the 'Americansublime,'overlookhis
terriblystatic,one ought to say,vulgar,exaltedness"(p. 40). But is not thatwhat makeshim an expo-
nent?(Of course,giventhe date,one sympathizes withKozloff'sdistaste.)

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In Defense
ofAbstract
Expressionism 43

horriblyright.The "buckeye"of the PartisanReviewtextis abandoned in favorof

"demotic-Impressionist" or "open-airpainting in autumnal colors." (Abandoned
almostcompletely-Greenbergcannot resista single,unexplained appearance of
the word towardthe end.) There are no more names and addresses on Eighth
Street,no more baffledtalkof a separate,impenetrable"paintingculture."This is
a criticin flightfrompreviousinsights,I feel.And I thinkI see why.

34. Then, finally,there is the problem of Hans Hofmann. You will not be
surprisedto hear thatit was in coming to termswithHofmannin particularthat
the vocabularyof the presentargumentfirstsurfaced.For everyonewho has ever
cared at all about Hofmann (including Greenberg,who cared verymuch) has
alwaysknown that in Hofmann the problems of taste in AbstractExpressionism
come squawking home to roost. A good Hofmann is tasteless to the core-
tastelessin its invocationsof Europe, tastelessin its mock religiosity,
tastelessin
its Color-by-Technicolor, its winksand nudges towardlandscape format,its Irving
Stone title,the cloyingdemonstrativeness of its handling.Tastelessand in com-
plete control of its decomposing means.

35. Seen in its normalsurroundings, past the unobtrusivesofasand the calla

as
lilies, part of that unique blend of opulence and sparenesswhichis the tasteof
the picture-buying classesin America,a good Hofmannseemsalwaysto be blurting
out a dirtysecretthatthe restof the decor is conspiringto keep. It makes a false
compactwithits destination.It takesup the language of its usersand exemplifies
it,runningmonotonous,self-satisfied riffson the main tune,playingit to the hilt-
to the point of parody,like Mahler with his sentimentalViennese palm-court
melodies.A good Hofmannhas to have a surfacesomewherebetweenice cream,
chocolate, stucco, and flockwallpaper.Its colors have to reekof Nature-of the
worstkind of Woolworthforest-glade-with-waterfall-and-thunderstorm-brewing. Its
titleshould turnthe knifein the wound.14For whatit showsis the worldits users
inhabitin theirheart of hearts.It is a pictureof their"interiors," of the visceral-
cum-spiritual upholstery of the rich.And above all it can have no illusionsabout its
own statusas partof thatupholstery. It is made out of the materialsit deploys.Take
them or leave them,these ciphersof plenitude-they are all paintingat present
has to offer."Feeling"has to be fetishized,made dreadfully(obscenely)exterior,if
paintingis to continue.

36. I do not believe thatwhatI havejust offeredis an account of Hofmann's

intentions,anymore than ifI had been arguingforthe coldness and hardnessof
Matisse's hedonism, say,or the pathos of Picasso's late eroticism. (Of course it
would be possible to give an account of all three which argued that our under-

14. .... And Thunderclouds

Pass comes froma poem by the AustrianRomanticNikolaus Lenau, And,
OutoftheCavesfromRilke'sSonnetstoOrpheus,
2, 11.

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 Hans Hofmann."And,Out of the
Caves,the NightThrewa Handful
of Pale TumblingPigeonsinto the
Light."1964.

Hans Hofmann."... And

ThundercloudsPass." 1961.

DouglasM. ParkerStudio.Marcia
SimonWeismanResidence. Circa
1962.

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In Defense
ofAbstract
Expressionism 45

standingof theirintentionshad been deficientup to now,and ought to include

the pathos or the coldness or the capacityforself-parody. I just do not thinkthe
inclusions are necessaryor plausible in Hofmann's case.) No doubt Hofmann
"believed in" his own overblownrhetoric. (What would it be like to go in for it
at thispitch of intensitywithout believingin it? Like AsgerJorn,maybe;not like
... And ThundercloudsPass.) I dare sayhe thoughthis titleswerewonderful.(Who
is going to quarrelwithNikolausLenau and the Sonnets to Orpheus?Onlya mod-
ernistcyniclike me.) And as for the place of his paintingsin Marcia Weisman's
sittingroom?He surelyassumed thatat the level thatreallymattered-the levelof
taste,as opposed to day-to-day preference-there was a profoundcommunityof
interestbetween himselfand the best of his clients.And so therewas. He could
not have painted theirinteriorsiftheywerenot his interiortoo.
These are not the mattersat issue, finally.The task for the criticis to find
an adequate language for the continuingeffect of, say,Hofmann'soverblownness
(I am not even sayingthat thisis the or
only primaryqualityof Hofmann'sversion
of AbstractExpressionism,but it is the one thatgets more interestingover time).
The overblownnessonly mattersbecause it seems to be what lends the pictures
theircoherence, maybetheirdepth. I am not meaning to congratulateHofmann
on gettinga qualityof pettybourgeoisexperience somehow"right."The qualityis
not hard to perceive and mimic.What is hard (what is paradoxical) is to make
paintingsout of it. That is whatHofmanndid. Of course I am sayingthatdoing so
involvedhim in an encounterwiththe conditionsof productionand consumption
of his own art. That is mybasic hypothesis.But the encounter could only take
place at the level of work,of painterlypractice-the encounter was gettingthe
overblownnessto be pictorial,or discoveringthatit was the qualityout of which
paintingsnow had to be made. Even to call thisan "encounter"is to give it too
much of an exterioror discursiveflavor.It was what Hofmann did, not what he
discovered.

37. This is not an argument,afortiori,

about AbstractExpressionists'social or
political opinions. Of course I relish the fact that ClyffordStill supported
McCarthy, or that Pollock was "a Goddamn Stalinistfromstartto finish,"15 in
much the same way that I like to know Manet was a frightfulGambettistand
Renoir believed that "sidingwiththeJewPissarrois revolution."16 But I knowmy
interestdoes not count for much in understandingwhat any of the four did as
painters.At best the factsmay strikeus as dimlyconsonant withone or another

15. On Still's McCarthyism, see Susan Landauer, "Clyfford Still and AbstractExpressionismin San
Francisco,"in Clyfford Still 1904-1980: The Buffaloand San FranciscoCollections, ed. Thomas Kellein
(Munich: Prestel,1992), p. 93. The verdicton Pollock's politicsis Greenberg's,in an interviewwithme
in 1981. I thinkhe meantit seriously.
16. Rough draftof letterto Paul Durand-Ruel,February26, 1882, discussingparticipationin that
year's Impressionistexhibition. See Lionello Venturi,Les Archives de l'Impressionisme
(Paris and New
York:Durand-Ruel,1939), vol. 1, p. 122. (The sentencewas omittedin Renoir'sfinaldraft.)

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46 OCTOBER

aspect (usuallya surfaceaspect) of theirsubjectmatteror handling-withManet's

epigrammaticbrittleness, say,or Renoir'sover-anxiousnessto please. But theyget
us nowherewithwhatreallymatters,whichis the artists'abilityto have these sur-
face qualitiescoexistwithothersseeminglyat odds withthem:Manet'spessimism
and compassion,forinstance,or Renoir'sdeadlyeconomyofmeans.

38. I am not sayingthatAbstractExpressionists'social attitudesarejust irrel-

evant.No doubt it helps to knowthatRothko,forinstance,had his own visionof
the pettybourgeoisfuture;and again, the factthathe saw it in the shape of the
University-theUniversity of Colorado at Boulder-is forme irresistible:
The University...is on the hill.At its base are the facultyapartments
whichare shells around appliances facinga courtinto whichthe chil-
dren are emptied. Two hundred yardsawayis Vetsville,in which the
presentfacultyitselfhad lived only fouror fiveyearsago when they
were preparingto be faculty.Vetsvilleitselfis occupied by graduates
fromarmyheadquarters,alreadymarriedand breedingwho willbe fac-
ultyin facultyquartersthreeor fouryearshence. Theybreed furiously
guaranteeingthe expansionwhichwillperpetuatethe processinto the
future.
The facultyitselfis allowed to stayhere only2 yearswhereupon
theymust assume mortgagesin similarhousing slum developments
where thereaftertheymustrepair theirown cracksand sprinkletheir
grass.....
Here is a self-perpetuating peonage, schooled in mass communal
living,which will become a formidablesixthestate withina decade.
It will have a cast of features,a shape of head, and a dialect as yet
unknown,and willpropagatea cultureso distortedand removedfrom
itsorigins,thatitsimage is unpredictable.17

Anyone familiarwith nineteenth-century stylesof ironyat the expense of the

nouvellescouchessociales will recognize this as generic (solecisms and all).
Condescensionjust is the formof the pettybourgeoisie'sself-recognition. Look at
All
the recentliteratureon yuppies. the same, even thispassage does not help me
and
withwhatis reallyinteresting, ultimatelybaffling, about Rothko as an artist:
whythe same banal loftinesscould lead to the brightnessof death at one moment
(1950), and to clinicalevacuationat another(1965).

39. Mytitle"In Defense of AbstractExpressionism" was not meantironically.

I have offeredwhatI thinkis the bestdefensepossibleof thisbodyofwork,and of
has turnedintoa termof
course I am aware thatin doing so the noun '"vulgarity"

17. Archivesof AmericanArt,HerbertFerberpapers,letterto the Ferbers,July7, 1955, quoted in

Breslin,MarkRothko,
p. 352.

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Hans Hofmann.
Memoriain Coalescence. 1961.
AdolphGottlieb.
Aeternum.
1962.

value, whetherI wanted it to or not. If the formulawere not so mechanical, I

would be preparedto saythatAbstractExpressionist paintingis bestwhenit is most
vulgar,because it is then that it grasps most fullythe conditionsof representa-
tion-the technicaland social conditions-of itshistoricalmoment.
The momentwas brief.By the time of the two paintingsI choose to end
with-1961 and 1962-it was almostover.The mode and indeed the titlesof the
two pictures-Hofmann's Memoria in Aeternumand Gottlieb's Coalescence-are
nothingifnotvaledictory. Death putsin itsusual appearance.The coffinis straight
out of EvelynWaugh.And thisoverstuffed, overwrought, end-and-beginning-of-the-
worldqualityseems to me, to repeat, the keyto these paintings'strength.They
have a truepettybourgeoispathos.One can see whyartin NewYorkfeltobliged to
retreatfromsuch dangerousgroundin theyearsthatfollowed,and whya lasteffort
was made to restabilizeavant-gardepracticein its previous(exhausted) trajectory.
The popular was easier to handle than the vulgar-it had more of the smell of
art about it. Reduction was a betterwayto generate recognizablemodernistart
was preferableto
worksthan thiskind of idiot "Ripenessis all." The site-specific
the class-specific.Arthad to go on, and thatmeant returningart mainlyto nor-
mal avant-gardechannels.18But for some of us-certainly for me-the price
paid for this accommodation in the 1960s and afterseems prohibitivelyhigh.

18. This defenseis not intendedas a covertattack,and thesefewsentencesdo not claim to charac-
terizewhatwas mostproductive(and genuinelyexcessive)in the artof the 1960s,especiallyfrom1967
onward.But I let themstand,because I do thinkthatpartof the historyof the 1960s willhave to be
writtenin termsof art's withdrawalfromAbstractExpressionism'simpossible class-belonging--its

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48 OCTOBER

The ridiculousmomentof coalescence,or of mourning,or of history,

is whatwe
stillwantfrompainting,and whatAbstractExpressionism to
manages provide.

40. So now I thinkI understandwhat I have been defendingall along. It

seems thatI cannot quite abandon the equation of Artwithlyric.Or rather--to
shiftfroman expressionof personalpreferenceto a proposal about arthistory-I
do not believe that modernism can ever quite escape fromsuch an equation. By
"lyric"I mean the illusion in an artworkof a singularvoice or viewpoint,uninter-
rupted,absolute,laying claim to a world of its own. I mean those metaphorsof
agency,mastery, and self-centeredness thatenforceour acceptance of theworkas
the expressionof a singlesubject.This impulseis ineradicable,alas, howeverhard
one strandof modernismmayhave worked,timeaftertime,to undo or make fun
of it.Lyriccannotbe expungedbymodernism,onlyrepressed.
Whichis not to saythatI haveno sympathy withthewishto do theexpunging.
For lyric in our time is deeply ludicrous. The deep ludicrousness of lyricis
AbstractExpressionism'ssubject,to whichit returnslike a tongue to a loosening
tooth.
This subject,of course, is farfrombeing the pettybourgeoisie'sexclusive
property.That is notwhatI have been arguing.Anyonewho caresforthe painting
of Delacroix or the poetryof VictorHugo willbe in no doubt thatthe ludicrous-
ness of lyrichas had its hautbourgeois avatars.But sometimesit fallsto a class to
offeror sufferthe absurditiesof individualismin pure form-unbreathablypure,
almost,a last gasp of oxygenas the plane goes down. That was the case, I think,
withAmericanpaintingafter1945.

horriblehonestyabout artand its place. Onlypart.Because the point is thatthe projectof "returning
artmainlyto normalavant-gardechannels"was and remainsa hopeless one in America.The grounds
(alwaysshaky)foran enduringavant-gardeautonomy,or even the mythof one, simplydo not exist.In
the later 1960s and early'70s the projectimploded. Franticeffortshave subsequentlybeen made to
reconstitutethe project around some "new" technology,or set of art forms,or refurbishedcritical
discourse;but whatis strikingis the waythese phenomena cannotescape the gravitationalpull of the
later 1960s.And I am sayingthatthe later1960s are a satellite,or a formof anti-matter,
to the prepon-
derantblack starof Coalescenceand Memoriain Aeternum.
A finalthingI do not want to be taken as sayingor implyingis thatart could make Abstract
Expressionisma thingof the past by imitating it, or tryingto go one betterthan it in the vulgarity
stakes.That has been a popular,and I thinkfutile,tacticin the lasttenyearsor so.

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