What fall?

New Criterion, June, 2006 by John Russell

Alice Goldfarb Marquis Art Czar: The Rise & Fall of Clement Greenberg. MFA Publications, 312 pages, $35

reviewed by John Russell

This reader was momentarily put off by the title of this fascinating book. Clement Greenberg was like no one else, and he held fast to his opinions. He was in no sense a "czar" Nor would he have wished to be so described. The word "czar" is now applied primarily to metropolitan gangsters by people who see it almost as a backhanded compliment. Like many a strong and sometimes peremptory character, Greenberg had his detractors. But if a "czar" had turned up at his front door, Greenberg would have given him the bum's rush.

Nor did Greenberg have "a fall" As Ms. Marquis tells it, Greenberg in the last years of his life was "stripped by a larcenous accountant" of some $750,000. That was not "a fall" but it was a considerable misfortune. Two days after his death on May 4th, 1994, he was described by Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times as "the most important art critic that the United States had produced." If that is "a fall" others would stand in line to get it.

Greenberg's mother had arrived in New York in 1899, when she was eleven years old. The Greenbergs came from a Lithuanian Jewish enclave in northern Poland. More than 163,000 refugees from Europe arrived in the United States in 1899, and when Greenberg's father, aged twenty, arrived in 1904, the year's arrivals numbered 322,000.

New York was acquiring its distinctive and endlessly rewarding character. The Greenbergs described themselves as "tailors, shoe-makers, and horse-thieves"--a trio that has "survival" written all over it.

New York was forever to be pervaded, and, in part, defined, by those arrivals. Their way of talking--rapidly, incisively, and always to the point--can still be heard on the street, in the restaurants, in the museums, in the irresistible shops, and on the subway.

Clement himself was vividly aware of the Jewish contribution to New York. His father had been a prime example of it. Clement's first language was Yiddish. The non-Jewish population in New York had for generations tried to keep the Jews out of the best universities, the largest and most successful corporations, and the desirable housing in upscale neighborhoods.

But, as Ms. Marquis points out, Greenbergs parents "brought with them a powerful element of Jewish values--respect for education, family ties, and a desire to 'make it.'" By the time that Clement was six, his father was a successful man of business in the "rag trade." In 1915, he was doing even better with both real estate and a metal goods factory. His father was quite indifferent to what the young Clement regarded as his exceptional gift for drawing. (All specimens of this were thrown out of the house).

I had been on friendly terms with Clement Greenberg ever since he began to visit London. He came primarily for the London art world, and the London art world was not short of clever and good-looking young women who were delighted to know him. The feeling was often mutual, and, when Clement persuaded one of them to go to France with him, he kindly asked me to go with them. I was flattered by this, but "two's company" seemed to me to fit the situation.

And then, a year or two later, I was invited to be on the jury of the upcoming John Moores Exhibition in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Greenberg had agreed to serve on the jury if I was on it, and I looked forward eagerly to the occasion. John Moores was a prominent figure in Liverpool who had decided to sponsor an annual exhibition of new paintings by presentable (or more than presentable) British painters. The prizes were generous, the response was cordial, and the gallery was not displeased to have an event of this kind and size land in its lap.

The jurymen were invited to stay in Liverpool for as long as they needed. There were several hundred pictures to select from, and exemplary senior schoolboys were there to bring them in and take them back out. They were spellbound by the brio with which Clement commented on the entries, and every morning they arrived early to be sure that they missed none of it.

We enjoyed being there, and we liked it all the more when Anthony Caro, the ranking English sculptor, came to join us and we took the afternoon off and toured the countryside. Nature does not exactly let herself go in that part of Lancashire, but there is something likeably plain-spoken about it. When he went back home, Clement was sometimes teased about the general quality of the Moores show. But he was not to be put down. "As I told them" he said to me later, "I never said that these were big painters. I said that they were nice painters" That is not the highest of compliments, nowadays, but he meant it and he stood by it.