Robert W. Witkin. Chewing On Clement Greenberg: Abstractions and the Two Faces of Modernism

Abstract

This is the summary of Robert Witkin’s paper where he analyses the shift occurred in the American art in 1960s from the abstract expressionism to pop-art and minimalism. His analysis shows that the tension between two different modernist strategies in art caused this shift. While abstract expressionists followed the ideas of Clement Greenberg about the definition of high art in opposite to mass culture (and failed to resist the invasion of mass culture), pop-art aimed to involve mass culture in their art and tried to blur the borders of art. To describe and explain this shift Witkin elaborates the anthropological ideas of perception and abstraction.