American Type Painting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

American Type Painting - Essay Example Greenberg notes that although painting had started showing signs of modernization earlier than other arts, there are several expandable conventions embedded in the art of painting. There are a great number of conventions that artists cannot isolate and this difficulty in isolation makes painting difficult to expand and change. The author reiterates that the law of modernization is to recognize and immediately discard the facets of a medium that are not essential for its viability. The process of self-purification is observed to have come to a halt in literature as the letters have few conventions to eliminate before reaching those essential to it. Likewise, music has changed over the ages to reach an in expandable state. Most of the facets of music that can be isolated and altered or eliminated have reached the limit of change. The author makes a radical simplification with the hope that the suggested and noted simplifications may be used to overhaul the existing arts to renew vitali ty of the arts in the face of the community that is bent on rationalizing everything as well as maintain irreplaceability. Clement Greenberg was an American specialized in the field of art critic who was closely linked with the American Modern art. His work American Type painting is generally viewed as a response to the Rosenberg’s American Action Painting, but its focus is more specific. It is an observed, unrelenting and sustained attempt to refute the idea that abstract expressionist painting. has fundamentals of a break with the past. The work is a close and meticulous visual analysis to the new critics, based on the most basic element of painting rather than ideas, concepts and psychological states (Frascina, Francis, Charles Harrison & Paul, 1998). It handles the emergence and development of abstract expressionist, which mainly argues for the discrimination of color field painting linking it to impressionism rather than cubism and explains that modern art evolved while artists were perusing advanced pictorial flatness. The title of the essay shows his discomfort with abstract expressionism which he believed was erroneous. Greenberg’s piece viewed abstraction as a facet for modern painting. This is the only way for any painting work to be authentically modern. Each medium had to engage in a process of rationalization which will eventually make it distinct from other related medium. Indeed it was a necessary element of modern art work because painting was being threatened by the introduction of commerce and cliches. Figurative art and the type of anectodal subjects were frequent in the American