Rereading Abstract Expressionism: Clement Greenberg and the Cold War

Although one can “read” a picture, the titular “rereading” has to be taken here in the very literal sense of the word. The author of this book, which does not contain a single illustration (although the cover is a beautiful one), does not really focus on visual objects (paintings) but rather on texts (more precisely art-critical texts with strong philosophical underpinnings). There is little room either for visual analysis or for the viewer’s experience, and thus for observations such as the following comments, here quoted on page 98, by Peter De Bolla, totally different from Neofetou’s own theoretical concerns and writing style: “This is Abstract Expressionism’s greatest late work. Form, structure, and content are interrogated and transformed by so vast a repertoire of techniques of pigment, application that you lose count: look up close and you will see paint squeezed, trowelled, flicked, smoothed. Mitchell uses and invests with absolute conviction...