Clement Greenberg Quotes

Where the Old Masters created an illusion of space into which one could imagine walking, the illusion created by a Modernist is one into which one can look, can travel through, only with the eye.

Complete honesty has nothing to do with 'purity' or naivety. The full truth is unattainable to naivety, and the completely honest artist is not pure in heart.

All profoundly original art looks ugly at first.

If you want to change your art, change your habits.

Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art.

Art is a matter strictly of experience, not of principles and what counts first and last in art is quality, all other things are secondary.

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 work of art-sculpture or painting-forces your eye.

The reality of art is disclosed only in experience, not in reflection upon experience.

With an 'advanced' artist, it's not now possible to make a portrait.

When you don't like something the words come more readily.

The difficulty of carrying on a leisure-oriented tradition of culture in a work-oriented society is enough in itself to keep the present crisis in our culture unresolved.

Nothing could be further from the authentic art of our time than the idea of a rupture of continuity. Art is - among other things - continuity, and unthinkable without it.

The superior artist is the one who knows how to be influenced.

Art solves nothing, either for the artist himself or for those who receive his art.

Kitsch is Mechanical and operates by formulas.

Kitsch is deceptive. It has many different levels, and some of them are high enough to be dangerous to the naive seeker of true light.

I don't get into 'becauses.' When you come into a studio you see a number of works. My habit is to go to the one I like most. If you start to say, 'because,' you get into art jargon.

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 view - the unity of which the eyes take in at a single glance.

Not all, but too many of the best writers, composers, and artists of our time begin to be acclaimed only when they no longer have anything to say and take to performing instead of stating.

One is also reminded of how, in art, the tortoise so often overtakes the hare.

I myself happen to find, on the basis of experience and nothing else, that photography can be a high art.

For every good art critic there may be ten great artists.

The avant-garde poet or artist tries in effect to imitate God by creating something valid solely on its own terms.

All profoundly original work looks ugly at first.