cover image Collected Essays and Criticism: Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949

Collected Essays and Criticism: Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949

Clement Greenberg. University of Chicago Press, $27.5 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-226-30618-6

Best known for championing Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists, Greenberg wrote prolifically on Kandinsky, Kafka, William Steig's cartoons, Marianne Moore, Dutch painting and surrealism as the ""desire to change life on the spot.'' For this keen student of history, Currier & Ives prints mark the transition from handicrafts to mass production, and primitive painting channels energies lacking an outlet since the death of true folk art. These two volumes of a projected four-volume set gather Greenberg's writings from Partisan Review, the Nation and elsewhere. His journalism has lost none of its relevance or bite; the essays bristle with independent judgments, wit, profundity. ``To find a path to keep culture moving'' is the avant-garde artist's role as defined by Greenberg, and these articles gauge the success or failure of artists by that standard. (October)