Throughout the rise and fall of Abstract Expressionism, Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg have been on the sidelines, debating the very nature of how the sport came to be. With two radically different interpretations of what they thought the significance of Jackson Pollock and the Abstract Expressionist movement was, it naturally pinned them against one another. The theories of Greenberg and Rosenberg are constantly debated on which one holds more validity, but I believe a combination of both theories will lead to the most accurate interpretation of Pollock and the Abstract Expressionists. In order to better understand the feud these two foster, this paper will go in depth into the theories of both Greenberg and Rosenberg, then will compare …show more content…
However, they differ on why those artists are theoretically great. For Rosenberg, the most important thing about a new painting is the way it portrays how “the artist organizes his emotional and intellectual resources as if he were in a living situation.” (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica.) Rosenberg believed that works don’t speak for themselves independently, but each work acts a story that tells what the artists intellectual and emotional ties to it were. He believed that American artists threw all their energy into the moment of creation, and that moment is registered on the canvas. ("Harold Rosenberg." The Art Story.) The art created simply acts as a recollection of the actions of the artist. Pollock once supported this theory by saying “painting is a state of being… Every good painter paints what he is.” Rosenberg even rejected the notion of Abstract Expressionism even being called Abstract. He argued that what the artists expressed on the canvas wasn’t abstract, but something deeply personal and familiar. Rosenberg believes that the very act of painting like the expressionist do, is a personal journey for the artist. They are leaping into the canvas, in a sense, and acting on instinct alone. The painting we are left with is a product of the painter as an actor. Because of this Rosenberg refers to the Abstract Expressionist movement as action painting, a term coined by him and still used today to express the style of the expressionists. ("Harold Rosenberg." The Art Story.) (Art Critics Comparison) He believed all the avant-garde movements before were derivative of something, but Abstract Expressionism was something entirely new. He said the change came when artists stopped seeing the canvas as support for a picture, but an arena in which the “act of painting” took place. He believes that the goal of painting is no