Tom Wolfe in The Painted Word (1975):
“It is important to repeat that Greenberg and Rosenberg
did not create their theories in a vacuum or simply turn up
with them one day like tablets brought down from atop
Green Mountain or Red Mountain (as B. H. Friedman once
called the two men). As tout le monde understood, they
were not only theories but … hot news,
straight from the studios, from the scene.”
| “Parable of American Painting,” 1954 — From The Tradition of the New , by Harold Rosenberg
“In this essay Rosenberg set out to explain what he believed to be definitively American about Abstract Expressionism. He did so by drawing on the American Revolutionary War for his metaphors, likening the new Americans to the coonskin trappers whose knowledge of their terrain enabled them to pick off the British soldiers (Redcoats), who followed the dictates of their military training. The professionally- trained soldiers were defeated because, as Rosenberg states, ‘They were such extreme European professionals … they did not even see the American trees.’ ‘Redcoatism’ was, Rosenberg argued, a symptom of the old European world’s stubborn rejection of the new. It did at one time also ‘[dominate] the history of American art,’ he wrote, but with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, times had changed. And just as the Coonskins were victorious because they stood apart from the professional military, so the new American art was triumphant because, as Rosenberg saw it, it marked a profound break with the traditions of European art.” |
Lectures at Bennington, 1971 |
For example:
Art adapted today from the Google search screen. Discuss.
