Abstract

Clement Greenberg is an influential figure in American art world in 1940s and 50s. He contributed greatly to abstract expressionist art. His influence declined since 1960s. His name was introduced to China in the end of 1980s. In 1990s, some of his important academic articles were translated into Chinese, which impacted art criticism in China. Although Greenberg’s art critic theories have lost their validity in the contemporary time in terms of art history writing and art critic practice, he has become an important research subject of modern and contemporary European and American art history. However, the study on Greenberg lacks in China, with only the book Art and Culture published in Chinese. Yet China is in the middle of a new art stage, thus how to read and refer to Greenberg becomes a theoretical and practical problem worth our thinking. This article explains the necessity to refer to Greenberg, and the importance to transcend his art theoretical frame.

Keywords: Greenberg, American art, Chinese art, reference

For Chinese art, Clement Greenberg is a good yet complicated theme. He is recognized as the most important art critic in the American modern art history. [1] It has been over 20 years since he was introduced to China. [2] However, whether Greenberg has become a source of our art theories, or whether his theories could match Chinese art, is in fact a problem of distance between theories and the reality.

1.Theoretical model

Any kind of foreign theory could find its applicable object and field in China; but it isn’t necessarily an applicable art background. We know that Greenberg attributed the origin of modernist criticism to Kant, set Kant’s “autonomy” and “transcendence” as the gist, and even believed that Kant is the very first modernist. [3] He equalled modernism with Kant’s “self-critical tendency” - “The essence of Modernism lies in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself”, but it is “not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.” [4] This is a starting point to understand the critic frame of Greenberg. Although his later findings contradict partly with his early findings, he has always insisted in an essential art position. For example, he simplified modernist model to purity and autonomy. It is exactly because of his insistence in the purity of modern art, which contradicts with the self-critic attribute of modernism that he also advocated, that make he couldn’t accept new art, such as Pop art, after the 1960s.

The medium specificity, flatness and purity were originally qualities of the modernist paintings that Greenberg emphasized, to be distinct from the traditionalism and classicism of the old masters’ art. In other words, he used the self-critic purity of art to manifest art’s free and avant-garde value, and regarded purity as a distance keeper from the tasteless capitalist commercial culture (cultural manufactures), to demonstrate art’s independent value, instead of “kitsch” consumption. Greenberg’s flatness forms a confrontation with illusionism of classicism: As classicism has become academic and turned into a kitsch, instead of self-reflective art with independent spirit, flattened modernist art was thus used to respond to such academicism. In this way, the medium specificity could be raised to the height of art’s independent value, because medium specificity could guarantee the freedom and autonomy of art form and style. However, we should bear in mind that Greenberg’s modernist, self-critic quality was based not only on painting, but also on his emphasis of quality and taste, which obviously conflicts with another modernist trend - Dadaism, Surrealism, and Conceptual Art. Greenberg had no appreciation for this trend. He promoted his theories so hardly so as to advocate the validity and legitimacy of American abstract expressionism. His theories innately contradict with Dadaist art and its branches, that’s why Greenberg criticized pop art and conceptual art harshly when they emerged [5], and expressed his disappointment towards the loss of painting’s purity and originality.

2. Avant-garde position and conflicts

In fact, Greenberg’s art theories and critic stand are associated with his political stand. Only when we compare his important articles from different phases that they could become reference of meaning. Or we wouldn’t be able to understand him deeply if we only judge him from one or two of his sentences. In that way, it might only turn out to be a study of academic history rather than enlightenment on practice. In other sense, it’s a problem of whether we should construct art theories or conduct art criticism on the premise of a certain social and political position. It’s utterly important to seeing significant  artistic and cultural development via the phenomenon of art theories and criticism.

Greenberg held a view of history in Avant-Garde and Kitsch - he viewed the progress of art as a thread of modernism’s development, and put it in the western social background and pointed out that “a part of Western bourgeois society has produced something unheard of heretofore - avant-garde culture”, he saw “bourgeois social order” as the “the latest term in a succession of social orders”, a time when “a superior consciousness of history” appeared, which was “a part of the advanced intellectual conscience of the fifth and sixth decades of the nineteenth century”, and “coincided chronologically -- and geographically, too -- with the first bold development of scientific revolutionary thought in Europe” [6]. Avant-garde was born against such a background. Greenberg’s criticism towards kitsch culture and art was due to his disappointment in politics of his time. The Great Depression, the rise of fascist and nazi countries, and especially the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact signed in August 1939 had great impact on his artistic judgements. [7]

Here, Greenberg asserted the value of “avant-garde” out of the pursuit in new bourgeois culture, especially the value “to keep culture moving in the midst of ideological confusion and violence”, in order to “maintain the high level of his art by both narrowing and raising it to the expression of an absolute” [8], instead of watching the “western bourgeois society” to face the crisis of value breakdown, thus the fundamentality of art is strengthened, and “art for art’s sake” was legitimated. Therefore, Greenberg’s emphasis on art’s purity is inseparable from art’s autonomy and medium specificity. The reason why he insisted on such formalism was that he hoped to keep the aesthetic value in a time of “value crisis”. He tried to save the culture with a sense of mission, thus he separated art’s aesthetic value from other social and political values. 

He therefore fully recognized the modern art development thread from Manet, Picasso, Matisse to Pollock, stuck to this modernist standpoint from Avant-Garde and Kitsch in 1939 to Modernist Painting in 1960, and even for his whole life. The reason that Greenberg denied Dadaism, Duchamp, pop art and conceptual art of the 1960s, etc., is their base on the commercial production generated from the capitalist urbanization. This is Greenberg’s standpoint of the times, as well as his dislocation of the times. While he insisted on an autonomic position of modernism, he excluded the existence and construction of an alternative art history. Meanwhile, Greenberg’s modernism focused on painting and sculpture, and highlighted visual quality and interest. This explains why he could not adapt to the post-modern art since 1960s. Greenberg then declared that good art no longer existed after he saw these new art, denouncing these art to be “in a state of confusion” [9]. He didn’t admit the artistic quality of such art. On the contrary, he emphasized repetitively that “everything that enters the context of art becomes subject, inexorably, to the jurisdiction of taste--and to the ordering of taste.” [10] Thus, under the new context, the influence and ability of Greenberg’s criticism quickly declined. Certainly, Greenberg himself believed that his criticism targeted more at later-stage modern art, which was American painting of the 1950s and 60s. In 1970, Greenberg and Michael Fried insisted: “No art of significance could be done that sits in between media, and that if something is neither painting nor sculpture, then it is not art. Against them, a whole generation of conceptual artists were relying on Duchamp in order to maintain that the art was in the concept, that is was dematerialized, that it did not cling to any medium, above all not to painting. They fought against the medium but, of course, didn’t rehabilitate the metier for all that.”[11]

This is exactly the contradictory part of Greenberg’s criticism. On one hand, he was a firm modernist, always defending for the purity and autonomy of modernism, affirming the progressiveness of avant-garde art and the reflective character of modern painting; on the other hand, he believed that “kitsch is a product of the industrial revolution”, that “popular, commercial art and literature with their chromeotypes, magazines covers, illustrations, ads, slick and pulp fiction, comics, Tin Pan Alley music, tap dancing, Hollywood movies, etc., etc.” [12] are kitsch, which only satisfied the entertainment consumerism of the masses during the capitalist urbanization, and the prevalence of kitsch meant the decline of high culture. Indeed, it is a representation of the consumer society’s popular culture. Kitsch is as well all kinds of academicism, which made no progress, whose “creative activity dwindles to virtuosity in the small details of form…and yet nothing new is produced.” [13] Thus, Greenberg put the progressive avant-garde art and backward kitsch on opposite side, seeing it as a competition between high interest and entertainment consumption. The reason that Greenberg promoted avant-garde art is that he hoped avant-garde art to have the ability to arouse high taste and to create new culture, while believing that kitsch was a tool of autocratic countries. [14] Here, Greenberg shows strong social criticality. This could be linked to his study of Marxism in the 1930s. [15] Although he gave up the ultra-left Marxism of the Soviet Unions later, he still carried on believing Frankfurt Marxism and liberalism, especially that he blended post-WWII liberalism into his theories on modernist art. [16] It is obvious that Greenberg stayed consistent on his denial of pop art and kitsch, but he failed to view conceptual art from his own enlightenment perspective of art’s self-reflective character, which is another development thread of modernist art - from art’s self-conscious dialogue (Duchamp’s Spring is an example) to art that breaks the format boundary and enters the knowledge dialogue that transcends visual (for example Magritte’s This is Not a Pipe). In this way, the spectrum that spans from post-modern art to contemporary art became a major conflicting subject of modernist art under Greenberg’s interpretation.

3. Greenberg’s Impact on China

Greenberg had great impact on art world in 1940s and 50s. His art criticism had a pivot position at that time, but as new art forms led by pop art emerged beginning 1960s, his influence had reduced, and stopped being the most suitable criticism of the art of today. [17] It is the outcome of transition of both social reality and the logic of art history itself. Compared with American and European art development, the progress of modern Chinese art was of great difference. They were not in the same pace, but respectively followed their own logic. [18] The gap still exists today. Even contemporary Chinese art is developing in its unique way, but to see it from the logic of art history, Chinese and foreign modern art histories still have different logic structures.

We have two dimensions for Chinese art criticism: one is the art historical fact that has already happened, which is clearly distinct from western modern art history; the other one is the status quo of Chinese art that is happening right now, which still cannot form a fixed art history, but manifests itself more as a criticism history or a subjective choice of criticism theory. This critic position is a concept or theoretical interpretation based on reality, and an interaction of theories’ subjectivity with real-life art, a prompt of some foresightedness, which manifests here the initiative and subjectivity of theories. Thus, Greenberg’s significance is an inspiration in these two aspects, instead of his conclusion of modernism.

For example, the simplified models and terms of Greenberg - flatness, medium specificity and purity of modernism - whether they also define 20th century Chinese art history is worth questioning. This is Greenberg’s personal explanation or visual judgement of modernism. Many American scholars have debated on his theories. For example, Leo Steinberg raised his doubts in his thesis Other Critieria. He believed that “Old Masters” had always had dialogues and reflection on art in European art history, questioning art and returning to art itself, using all kinds of methods to eliminate the depth caused by illusionism, “all important arts, at least arts since 14th century, focus highly on self-criticism”.[19] It is not only modernism that cares about art itself and turns art into flatness and purity. Thus, modernism needs to be re-defined, or to put it in another way. Steinberg’s criticism has not been fully absorbed into modernism’s discourse, while Greenberg’s discourse system resulted in the formalist painting that saw avant-garde and modernity as the subject and mission of modern art history writing, which influenced the attitude and criticism of painting practices. The result is the praise of abstract and denounce of realist; and by raising flatness up to the level of painting’s nature, it confused people’s conception of painting. That is why abstract expressionism eventually declined, because the discovery of a painting language does not mean the elimination of the validity of other languages. The key lies in what consist in painting art and what makes a good painting. [20]

It is wrong to fully apply Greenberg’s flatness and purity on Chinese painting practices because of the delayed development of Chinese art. Although Greenberg was too a extent specific in the explanation of these terms, and the delay of the introduction of Greenberg’s theories due to temporal and social reasons led to the temporal disposition of our conception, we need to be aware that the effectiveness of our judgement on today’s painting shouldn’t necessarily be guided by flatness and purity. On the contrary, we should break through misunderstandings caused by the delay in time -  to believe that the truth of history arrives again. We should be susceptible to the new problems caused by the inconsistency as a result of the change of the times, and other problems due to our blindness. 

Thus, when we think about why Greenberg lost his influence at the peak of his critic career, we shouldn’t satisfy with simple conclusions like “the death of painting” or “the end of formalism”, or we are abandoning the problem of format that we should yet haven’t been able to solve. This could be fully illustrated with our art education and art creation. For example, art academies are holding graduate exhibitions recently, from undergraduate exhibitions to doctor degree exhibitions, and even refresher courses’ exhibitions. After seeing these exhibitions dominated by paintings, one had to say something frustrating: the teachers’ education lacked structures or true knowledge of the relationship between the world and art; it was obsessed with the appearance that was ornate, disorderly and flexible. Not only was the problem of format solved, the creators’ conception of painting was also weak and flawed. Greenberg’s purity was not achieved, and Old Masters’ continuous reflective spirit on art that Steinberg said was not carried out either. What is left is pile-up, scribbles and rigidness that are good in appearance only.

This demonstrates that art education needs to solve the conceptive problem of art, to answer the important question that what art is for, and to solve the problem of by what approach art is made, especially the self-reflection and criticism ability in terms of art education. Being stuck in convention should never be the aim or true essence of art creation, nor the target of art education - let’s not say if the aim of education is to nurture artists. The basic principle of art education should be encouraging innovation and independent thinking. However, many works in these exhibitions didn’t achieve that principle. If we can’t even meet the Greenberg art principles, new art that transcends Greenberg is out of question.

The other Greenberg’s position that we need to transcend is his one-sided affirmation and explanation of modernism. The other vein of art conception and creation, initiated and consolidated by Dadaism and conceptual art, has already made a magnificent sight. From the perspective of knowledge production, such kind of art is a new conceptive dimension of the humankind. It is different from visual format, color or space. Behind it there is also the avant-garde criticality and social political reflectiveness that Greenberg advocated in his early academic life. If we cannot mediate the inner conflict of Greenberg’s theories, we won’t be able to reach the conceptive stage with multiple possibilities and creativeness. In this case, we cannot write from multiple perspectives when we write about Chinese modern art history, but will only be limited in the formalist pleasure, which is exactly the result of kitsch academicism that Greenberg criticized about.

We need to keep comparing, reflecting and criticizing the relationship between Greenberg and China. In Europe and America, his criticisms and conclusions are increasingly become only an example in history books. His theories have lost their freshness. Yet we could still use Greenberg’s theories as a reference in China’s contemporary art theoretical framework, but in the meantime we shouldn’t limit ourselves in this application, or a greater time and space contrast would appear - after all, Greenberg has become a past tense on the international stage; although we still don’t have a complete research on Greenberg’s theories, but to what extent should we do research on Greenberg, and how much should we refer to his modernist theories, and the background he established these theories against are worth our deep thinking, dialogue and even criticism.

When Greenberg’s art criticism increasingly fail to respond to today’s art, we need to read him under the premise of the reality of Chinese art history. When Greenberg approved avant-garde and saw it as the drive force of the creation of new culture, are we prepared to actively accept such “avant-garde” mindset? When avant-garde stops to become the mainstream discourse in Europe and America, will it face the same situation in China as well? That’s why we should pay attention to the hidden meaning of Greenberg when reading him.

The influence of Greenberg manifested because of the rise of American art after the WWII. He represented the myth of an era. 1960s also witnessed the rise of European and other regions’ art, especially the conceptual art in Europe represented by Beuys. As they were not compatible with the formalist aesthetics represented by Greenberg, it was inevitable that Greenberg lost its influence and effectiveness. However, one thing we need to know is that the cultural confidence that Greenberg had came from his acknowledgement of the entire European culture, instead of the narrow nationalism. He was highlighting the creativity of America based on European civilization. The only problem was that he didn’t dig into the bottom of his reflective spirit, and tied himself up in his own theoretical frame. When he observed and interpreted other art, he tended to be doctrinal and neglected actual condition. This is what art creators and critics should avoid.

Whether or not are the art theories that Greenberg raised effective in China, or whether the regenerated cultural system in China could raise valid, meaningful art theories instead of repeating Greenberg - we should first learn from Greenberg’s cultural confidence, ability to take in new information and persistence. Of course, the rise of American art on the global stage is not the result of Greenberg’s one-man power, although he’s the one that announced that New York became the international cultural center, and even replaced Paris to become the cultural symbol of the western world [21]:

One has the impression - but only the impression - that the immediate future of Western art, if it is to have any immediate future, depends on what is done in this country. As dark as the situation still is for us, American painting in its most advanced aspects - that is, American abstract painting - has in the last several years shown here and there a capacity for fresh content that does not seem to be matched either in France or Great Britain. [22]

It is the result of the rise of America as a superpower state. The co-existence and dialectic of different culture attitudes, guaranteed by its social mechanisms, also contributes to culture as an image of the nation-state. The avant-garde art, judging from how it happened, is actually a paradox: It appeared as a reflection, a criticism, even a confrontation against the social existence, social consciousness and social politics, but it eventually was absorbed into the society, repeatedly explained and circulated as a country’s cultural fortune, and seen as the representative of the nation-state’s individuality, creativity and the life force of the society. The modern art history writing, education, collection and exhibition are a good proof. What they realized were the “avant-garde” art and spirit that Greenberg highly praised.

4. Referring for Creation

What China could refer to Greenberg is that, on the one hand, we have well-equipped academy art education, and we are facing the pressure from social changes. This requires discussion on whether Chinese academies have become the fortress of the “kitsch” culture defined by Greenberg. On the other hand, Greenberg’s insistent defense of modernism is an enlightenment and reassurance for the reflection within China of its own art. Entering the 21st century, Chinese art is no longer in the stage of chasing after modernism and realism, but the gap in art history still exists, and it remains to be discussed whether purity and medium specificity should be the doubtless logic of Chinese art history, at least in today’s Chinese art history studies, there is still no such conclusion. How we should establish China’s modern art practices and theories is not a question which can be simply solved by referring to Greenberg.

In fact, the many questions Greenberg faced that we refer to and answer are the question of looking for the critic position of today’s China; the reason that Greenberg’s criticism are valid is his target at modern art, especially American modern art. He discovered abstract expressionism, and actively promoted and defended it. The American abstract art was condemned and defamed both in America and internationally at the time, but Greenberg demonstrated its historical legitimacy and realistic meaning. [23] This is exactly what we should learn when dealing with Chinese contemporary art in reality - if we would have consistent cultural attitude, breadth of mind, courage and wisdom towards new art in today’s China. Art needs discovery as well as protection. On this level, Greenberg as an active participant of American abstract expressionist art is a good example to learn from, because we tend to deny rather than accept our new art.

There’s still a difficulty in the reference of Greenberg, that is the invalidity of his criticism after post-modernism appeared. We will have to depend on other discourses in that field. In terms of this, Greenberg and post-modernist criticism are complementary instead of conflicting. As for China, on the one hand, modernist art education and ideas are still not popular, on the other hand, the society is under rapid change - in an environment of complicated social form and various social elements, it’s impossible for us to deepen of knowledge only with Greenberg’s theories. To deeply research on Greenberg is to deeply understand the relationship between art and society in our time. Greenberg is a good systematical language when it comes to the interpretation of modernist art, but we’ll have to embrace wider knowledge range and richer theoretical resources when it comes to post-modern art. The transcendence beyond visuality is an outstanding character of post-modernism, as well as a target under criticism in modernist perspective. Modernism raises visuality, tastefulness and quality onto an absolute height, and post-modern art plays exactly a   role of destroyer. The conflict and contradiction between the two reveal in our daily art practices, be it creation or criticism, or academy education. To resolve the contradiction between modernism and post-modernism is an important theoretical topic we need to focus on.

In reality, people are no longer satisfied with Greenberg-style modernist criticism, but incline towards post-modernist society-culture-history-politics interpretation. Judging upon the status quo of art diversity and national diversity, it is impossible to limit these art with Greenberg’s modernist logic. On the contrary, it is the multi-diversity and identity politics characteristic of post-modernism that could re-interpret post-modernist art (contemporary art), and is trying to fill in the gap between Greenberg’s modernism and post-modernism, for example “Rethinking modernism is only one of the benefits of engaging one more with flatness: the term possesses significant explanatory force in analysing so-called postmodern art as well. There is a great deal at stake in acknowledging that the flatness or depthlessness we experience in our globlized world is more than an optical effect. I will argue that flatness may serve as a powerful metaphor for the price we pay in transforming ourselves into image – a compulsory self-spectacularization which is the necessary condition of entering the public sphere in the world of late capitalism.”[24] Here it emphasizes that flatness as a method is no longer a medium specificity of modernism, but a flatness where the flatness, body, psychology and identity politics co-exist.

In the west, Greenberg became a target of reflection and even transcendence. Thus he never could be a absolute reference in China, but he definitely will provide a method to understand modernist art, and we need to go beyond Greenberg when it comes to post-modern contemporary art. To perceive contemporary Chinese art, we need to go beyond Greenberg’s modernist formalist criticism, and extend our knowledge to post-modern contemporary art field, or one-sidedness and deviation will show in our understanding and research of artistic reality, and even our art creations.

Eventually, from the perspective of art theories, what Greenberg introduced to China is a knowledge and reference, and a lesson to compare with Chinese artistic reality. We should attach importance to the cultural symbol and demonstrative effect on art criticism that Greenberg sparkled in America, rather than the conclusions he reached.

Wang Chunchen

Written in April 2010 and revised on June 29, 2010 at Central Academy of Fine Arts

Published on the September 2010 edition of Literature&Art Studies

[1] Charles Harrison & Fred Orton (ed.), Modernism, Criticism, Realism (Cui Cheng and others, trans.), Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 1991, p.27.

[2] The first Chinese translation of Greenberg was "Towards a Newer Laocoon" (translated by Yi Ying), published on the 4th edition of World Arts in 1991. In the same year, the thesis collection titled "Modernism, Criticism, Realism" was translated and published by the Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, which includes a less important article of Greenberg’s, Complaints of an Art Critic, which didn’t cause much sensation among Chinese art critics. Following that, another two important articles of his, "Modernist Painting" (World Arts, March 1992 edition, translated by Zhou Xian) and "Avant-garde and Kitsch" (World Arts, Feb 1993 edition, translated by Yi Ying) were translated. The first article that introduced abstract expressionism and Greenberg was Luo Shiping’s “Commentary of American Abstract Expressionist Critics”, published on World Arts’s 1st edition in 1986. The first MA graduation thesis in China was “An Initial Research on Greenberg’s Aesthetic Ideas” by Leng Lin, published on World Arts’s 4th edition in 1993 and 1st edition in 1994. In 1993, Taiwan published Greenberg’s Art and Culture, which became the only book to read Greenberg for Chinese-speaking art critics. The mainland edition of Art and Culture was only published by Guangxi Normal University Press in 2009. A book that introduces Greenberg and American abstract expressionism, Pollock and After (first published in 1985), was planned to be published by Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, and Yi Ying and Gao Ling had already finished translation in early 1990s, but the publishing was canceled due to many reasons, and obstructed research and knowledge of Greenberg in China. The second edition in English was published in 2000, with nine more articles added into the book, but it is still unknown when the Chinese version could be published. Many Chinese publishing houses are interested in Greenberg’s four-volume complete works, but copyright and translation arrangement can be a great project, and there’s no sign of any publishing plan. The article “Avant-garde and Kitsch” already has six Chinese translations (Yi Ying [1993], Zhang Xinlong [1993], Zhou Xian [2003], Qin Zhaokai [2007], Shen Yubing [2009], Zha Hongmei [2009]). The latest translation is included in a collection named Modern and Abstract, published by Joint Publishing in December 2009.

[3] Greenberg, “Modernist Painting”, in Radical Spearhead of Aesthetics (Zhou Xian trans.), Chinese People’s University Press, Beijing, 2003, p.204.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Greenberg, “Where is the Avant-Grade?”, Yang Bingying trans., World Arts, May 2009, p.68.

[6] Greenberg, “Avant-garde and Kitsch”, Qin Zhaokai trans., Art Observation, May 2007, p.122.

[7] Postmodern Perspectives: Issues in Contemporary Art, edited by Howard Risatti, Prentice, 1998, p.3

[8] Greenberg, “Avant-garde and Kitsch”, Shen Yubing trans., Arts and Culture, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2009, p.5.

[9] Greenberg, “Avant-Garde Attitudes: New Art in the Sixties”, in Clement Greenberg: The Selected Essays and Criticism, vol.4, Modernism with a Vengeance 1957-1969, edited by John O’Brian, The University of Chicago Press, 1993, p.292.

[10] Ibid., p.293.

[11] Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985, Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 2010, p.29.

[12] Greenberg, “Avant-garde and Kitsch”, Yi Ying trans., Decline of New York, Hebei Fine Arts Publishing House, 2004, p.11.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid., p21-24.

[15] Nancy Jachee, "Modernism, Enlightenment Values, and Clement Greenberg", in Oxford Art Journal 21.2 1998, p.124.

[16] Ibid., p132.

[17] Irving Sandler, “Introduction”, in Art of The Postmodern Era: From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s, Westview Press, Colorado, 1996, p.2.

[18] The 20th century Chinese art, to view it generally, is dominated by “modernism” and “realism”. Although “contemporary” art with heterogeneity and distinction appears today, it is under debate whether modernist model is predominant in 20th century China. Referring from Pan Gongkai, The Road of Chinese Modern Art; Yi Ying, From Hero Lauds to the Earthly World; Zou Yuejin, Art History of New China; and Lu Peng, 20th Century Chinese Art History, etc.

[19 ] Leo Steinberg: “Other Criteria” (Shen Yubing trans.), Journal of Zhejiang University (Social Sciences), March 2010, Edition 2 of Volume 40, p.51

[20] Michael Fried, “Critique of Greenberg’s Reductionism of Modernist Painting” (Shen Yubing trans.), Journal of Zhejiang University (Social Sciences), March 2010, Edition 2 of Volume 40, p.57

[21] Serge Guilbaut, Introduction, in How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, translated by Arthur Goldhammer,  The University of Chicago Press, 1983, p.5.
[22] Clement Greenberg, The Situation at the Moment, in Clement Greenberg: The Selected Essays and Criticism, vol.2, Arrogant Purpose 1945-1949, edited by John O’Brian, The University of Chicago Press, 1993, p.193.
[23] Clement Greenberg, The Situation at the Moment, in Clement Greenberg: The Selected Essays and Criticism, vol.3, Affirmations and Refusals 1950-1956, edited by John O’Brian, The University of Chicago Press, 1993, p.218.

[24] Zoya Kocur and Liang Shuo’en (ed.), Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985, Wang Chunchen and others (trans.), Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 2010, p.293.