Struggle Over The Modern

"In Struggle Over the Modern, Dennis Raverty argues that there was not one, but two, competing "modernisms" vying for dominance of the critical field in American art during the first half of the twentieth century." "The most familiar strain of this debate to us today is formalism, which emphasized "purity" in art and culminated in the writing of the influential late modern critic, Clement Greenberg. The other critical position, he contends, is not as familiar to us today, partly because it was so overshadowed by formalist thought in the postwar period. This position emphasized the importance of "experience" over formal purity and is evident in the writing of Greenberg's rival, Harold Rosenberg, as well as in a number of American writers and critics from the first half of the century. Struggle Over the Modern reconstitutes this neglected yet important dimension of the avant-garde debate in American art criticism decade by decade."--Jacket.