The papers of art critic, author, and lecturer Clement Greenberg measure 8.6 linear feet and date from 1937 to 1983. The bulk of the collection consists of letters from art critics, artists, family, friends, galleries, and museums. Notable correspondents include Jack Bush, Anthony Caro, Richard Diebenkorn, Friedel Dzubas, Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Morris Louis, Robert Motherwell, Charles Pollock, Jules Olitski, David Smith, and Anne Truitt among others. Also found are biograpical materials, personal business and financial records, an etching by Kurt Wisneski, printed materials, and two reports by Greenberg concerning his travels.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of influential New York art critic Clement Greenberg measure 8.6 linear feet and date from 1937 to 1983. The bulk of the papers (7 feet) consists of letters from art critics, artists, family, friends, galleries, and museums, with some letters from Greenberg. Correspondents include Edward Avedisian, Darby Bannard, Ethel Baziotes, Jack Bush, Anthony Caro, Gene Davis, Richard Diebenkorn, Piero Dorazio, Friedel Dzubas, Andre Emmerich, Paul Feeley, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Goodnough, Adolf Gottleib, Hans Hofmann, Philippe Hosiasson, Jacob Kainen, Rosalind Krauss, Robert Motherwell, Ken Moffett, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Beverly Pepper, Ludwig Sander, David Smith, Kimber Smith, Clyfford Still, Anne Truitt, and Leslie Waddington.
Biographical materials include a transcript of an interview with Greenberg conducted by Deborah Solomon in 1983. Greenberg's personal business and financial records include correspondence regarding his lectures and seminars, requests for his writings, student queries, documents regarding his television and radio appearances, royalty statements, and receipts for gifts of works of art. Also found within business records are documents relating to Greenberg's testimony at the Mark Rothko Trial in 1974.
Artwork consists of one etching by Kurt Wisenski entitled "Spring." The papers contain very few of Greenberg's writings about art. Found are lists of artists, and reports written by Greenberg on the state of art in Japan and India in 1967, likely related to his membership in the American Committee for Cultural Freedom. Printed material includes scattered clippings concerning art and exhibition announcements.
One series of ACCESS RESTRICTED papers contains documents relating to Greenberg's role as a trustee in the David Smith estate; correspondence between Greenberg with Andre Emmerich and Peter Fuller, Nuala O'Faolain, and the Greenberg family; and some financial materials regarding the sale and loan of Greenberg's art collection.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 7 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Information, circa 1950s-1983 (Box 1; 2 folders)
Series 2: Business and Financial Records, 1940-1983 (Box 1; 12 folders)
Series 3: Correspondence, 1937-1983 (Boxes 1-8; 7 linear feet)
Series 4: Artwork, 1973 (Box 8; 1 folder)
Series 5: Writings and Notes, 1967-1983 (Box 8; 3 folders)
Series 6: Printed Material, 1950-1982 (Box 8; 2 folders)
Series 7: David Smith Estate Materials (Boxes 9-11; 1.2 linear feet)
Biographical Note:
Clement Greenberg was a highly influential art critic working in New York City from the 1940s through the 1960s. He was an advocate of modern art, particulary the abstract expressionist movement, and one of the first critics to recognize the significance of Jackson Pollock's work.
Greenberg was born in 1909 to Russian immigrants in Bronx, New York. After graduating from Syracuse University in 1930, he married and had a child, David. He settled in New York City while working at the United States Customs Department as an appraiser.
In the late 1930s, Clement Greenberg attended a meeting of the U.S. Works Progress Administration and heard Hans Hofmann speak of avant-garde art. In 1939, he wrote one of his first important critical pieces "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" for the Partisan Review. Greenberg argued that the avant-garde art movement rose out of the need to defend and maintain high art standards against the decline in taste brought about by America's consumerism and capitalist culture.
In 1940, Greenberg joined Partisan Review as an editor. He became art critic for the Nation in 1942, and was associate editor of Commentary from 1945 until 1957. In December 1950, he joined the CIA-fronted American Committee for Cultural Freedom.
Throughout the 1940s through the 1960s Greenberg continued to write and, in his essays and articles, he promoted the work of Abstract Expressionists, among them Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, Barnett Newman, and Clyfford Still. He particularly championed Jackson Pollock. Greenberg wrote several seminal essays that defined his views on art history in the 20th century. "Greenberg on Collage" was one one of his most important.
Greenberg's views on pop art were mixed. He also became less enamored with Abstract Impressionism, particularly the second generation. However, he became very interested in the Color-Field and Hard-Edge painters.
Through the 1960s Greenberg's views informed a younger generation of art critics including Michael Fried and Rosalind E. Krauss. Some writers maintain that Greenberg's views were so well-respected that he had too much of an influence on the world of art. In time, Greenberg's antagonism to Postmodernist theories and other modern art movements caused him to lose much of his credibility among both artists and art critics.
Greenberg died at the age of eighty-five in 1994.
Since his death, letters edited by his widow, Janice Van Horne and a re-evaluation of his writings have helped to restore his reputation within the art world.
Related Material:
The Portland Art Museum holds Clement Greenberg's private art collection as well as a library of exhibition catalogs.
Separated Material:
The Archives of American Art also holds microfilm of material lent for microfilming (reels N69-91, N70-7, and N737). Most, but not all, of these papers were later donated by Greenberg. Loaned materials not donated at a later date remain with the lender and are not described in the container listing of this finding aid.
Provenance:
Clement Greenberg initally lent material for microfilming in 1968-1969. He donated most of this material with additional papers in several accretions between 1984 to 1991.
Restrictions:
This collection is temporarily closed to researchers due to archival processing and digitization. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Occupation:
Art critics -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Topic:
Art criticism -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Dorothy Dehner, 1965 October-1966 December. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
An interview of Dorothy Dehner conducted 1965 October-1966 December, by Garnett McCoy and Rosalind Krauss, for the Archives of American Art.
Both interviews involve discussion of Dehner's husband, David Smith.
Biographical / Historical:
Dorothy Dehner (1901-1994) was a sculptor, painter, and printmaker from New York, New York. Dehner was married to sculptor David Smith.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav file. Duration is 2 hr., 40 min.
Provenance:
These interviews are part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Occupation:
Sculptors -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Printmakers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
An interview with Allan Sekula conducted 2011 August 20-2012 February 14, by Mary Panzer, for the Archives of American Art at Sekula's studio and home in Los Angeles, California and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York.
Sekula speaks of his career and some of the mediums he works in; language and contemporary art; Roland Barthes; his relation to contemporary art; west coast conceptualism; genre switches; realism; documentary photography; Belgium and the industrial revolution; Meunier; minor figures; art history and marginalism; Roberto Matta; World War I; Homer Folks; Fish Story; historic cinema; economic factors of art shows and publication; galleries and the art world; growing up and his family; his father and moving; Ohio; his brothers and sisters; San Pedro; demographics of students at school; sports at school; Vietnam; protests; cross country and swimming; California; fishing; college; U.C. system; declaring a major; John Altoon; Ed Kienholz; exposure to art; visiting museums; Marcuse's classes; Baldessari's classes; course work and student life; student demonstrations; working in a library and exposure to books; father losing his job; science and working as a chemical technician; politics; his uncle committing suicide; moving away from his father; the draft; John Birch; Students for a Democratic Society; his mother; politics of his parents; Aerospace Folk Tales, autodidacts and scholarship; San Diego and Mexico; obtaining a camera and starting to use it; art school; CalArts; UCSD; Meditations on a Triptych; David Salle; Fred Lonidier; Phel Steinmetz; MFA and art training; poets; story of Allen Ginsberg and one of Sekula's sculptures; production and the audience; A Photograph is Worth a Thousand Questions, photography and the burden of tradition; pictorialism; moving to New York; Artforum; October; New York music scene; Captain Beefheart; Bo Diddley; Little Richard; Steichen and aerial photography; origins of October; New Criterion; Art Critic's Grant; teaching at Ohio State; television; technological historians; New York subway and getting a ticket for using French money; RISD lectures; Long Beach; photography; collages; Metro Pictures; New Topographics; School as a Factory; moral choice and the viewer; work method and the audience; Social Criticism and Art Practice; east and west coasts; Ed Ruscha; documentary; film, Los Angeles; cinema and social history; Ohio State Department of Photography and Cinema; Los Angeles Plays Itself; Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador; Ohio State campus, anti-Semitism; Ronald Reagan and protest; influences and colleagues; intellectual genealogy; Michael Graves and Ohio State architecture; Bad Ohio; tenure; University Exposed; AIDS issue of October; The Body and the Archive; making film; Korean War; collectors and images. Sekula also recalls Eleanor Antin, Jeff Wall, Terry Fox, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Paul Saltman, Marcuse, Baldessari, Sacvan Bercovitch, Stanley Miller, Jef Raskin, Paul Brach, David Antin, Howard Fried, Peter Van Riper, Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins, Manny Farber, Ihab Hassan, Diane Wakoski, Jackson Mac Low, Martha Rosler, Lenny Neufeld, Joshua Neufeld, David Wing, Brian Connell, Max Kozloff, Ian Burn, Mel Ramsden, Carole Conde, Karl Beveridge, Barry Rosens, Tom Crow, John Copeland, Harry Lunn, Hilton Kramer, Grace Mayer, Carol Duncan, Eva Cockroft, Richard Pommer, Rosalind Krauss, Sally Stein, Paddy Chayefsky, John Hanhardt, Mel Ramsden, Sarah Charlesworth, Jospeh Kosuth, Baruch Kirschenbaum, Robert Heinecken, Brian O'Doherty, Howard Becker, Jay Ruby, Jerry Liebling, Anna Wilkie, Ronald Feldman, John Gibson, David Ross, Britt Salvesen, Larry Sultan, Mike Mandel, Roy Ascott, Ilene Segalove, Paul Schimmel, DeeDee Halleck, Noel Burch, Joan Braderman, Woody Hayes, Thom Andersen, John Quigley, Ron Green, Kasper Koenig, Dan Graham, Jonathan Green, Christa Wolf, Catherine Lord, Ben Lifson, and Annette Michelson.
Biographical / Historical:
Allan Sekula (1951-2013) was a photographer, filmmaker, and writer, based at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. Mary Panzer (1955- ) is a historian from New York, New York.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
The Louis K. Meisel Gallery selected records measure 0.4 linear feet and date from 1964-2003. The records of this New York gallery consist of correspondence with artists and other individuals, writings by Louis K. Meisel, subject files on Gregory Battcock and Jason Seley, and photographs. Correspondence documents the gallery's dealings with its artists.
Scope and Contents note:
The Louis K. Meisel Gallery selected records measure 0.4 linear feet and date from 1964-2003. The records of this New York gallery consist of correspondence with artists and other individuals, writings by Louis K. Meisel, subject files on Gregory Battcock and Jason Seley, and photographs. Correspondence documents the gallery's dealings with its artists.
Among the correspondents are John Baeder, Chuck Close, Don Eddy, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Ralph Goings, Richard McClean, Theodoros Stamos, and others. Also found are letters from Larry Rivers, Anwar el-Sadat, Robert Hughes, and Tom Messer.
Writings include a typescript by Louis K. Meisel on becoming an art dealer. A subject file on art historian Gregory Battcock contains several reviews, scattered materials including letters, clippings, lists, press releases, and a photograph of Battcock with David Bourdon, Hilton Kramer, Rosalind Krauss, Barbara Rose, and others attending an International Art Association of Art Critics conference. There are subject files on Jason Seley containing photographs, correspondence, and printed materials.
Photographs include a photograph of Louis K. Meisel and his wife, Susan Meisel with Photorealists artists at a book party. Also found are photographs of John Baldesarri with Herbert and Dorothy Vogel; and Andy Warhol and Elizabeth Taylor.
Arrangement note:
The collection is arranged as 4 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Correspondence, 1964-2003 (Box 1; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 2: Writings, circa 1970s (Box 1; 1 folder)
Series 3: Subject Files, 1974-1981 (Box 1; 5 folders)
Series 4: Photographs, circa 1980s-1993 (Box 1; 0.1 linear feet)
Biographical/Historical note:
Louis K. Meisel (1942- ) opened the Louis K. Meisel Gallery on Prince Street in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City in 1966. The gallery has promoted the work of realist painters, sculptors, and photographers. Louis K. Meisel Gallery has also championed another genre of American realism, the Pin-up; the gallery has an extensive collection of vintage and contemporary Pin-ups. Artists represented include: John Baeder, Robert Bechtle, Charles Bell, Chuck Close, Audrey Flack, Ronald Kleemann, Mel Ramos, and Theodoros Stamos, among others.
Born in 1942 in Brooklyn, Louis K. Meisel has had a varied career as an art dealer, writer, and collector. Meisel attended Columbia University, 1964 and the New School for Social Research in New York, 1963-1965. Credited with coining the phrase, Photorealism in the late 1960s, Meisel defined the qualities of the Photorealist artist.
Louis K. Meisel has written numerous books and articles on Photorealism, the American Pin-Up, and other art-related topics. He has also lectured at academic and art-related institutions, including the Arts and Crafts Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1978; Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1980, 2002; the Natural History Museum, Smithsonian Institution, 1993; and the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, 2002. His collecting interests have been wide-ranging. In addition to his extensive collection of Photorealist paintings and Pin-up illustrations, Meisel is a collector of 1940s Moderne, tin toys, Art Deco statues, and naturalia.
Since 2000, Louis K. Meisel, in partnership with Frank Bernarducci, has operated the Bernarducci. Meisel. Gallery on 57th Street in New York as a venue for established and emerging artists.
Provenance:
The Louis K. Meisel Gallery selected records were donated by Louis K. Meisel in 1990 and 2009.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Function:
Art galleries, Commercial -- New York (State)
Genre/Form:
Photographs
Citation:
Louis K. Meisel Gallery selected records, 1973-2003. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Constantin Brancusi, French, b. Hobitza, Romania, 1876–1957 Search this
Medium:
Bronze on stone and wood bases
Dimensions:
18 1/8 x 11 1/2 x 9 1/8 in. (46.1 x 29.2 x 23.0 cm.) on stone base: 6 1/4 x 8 1/2 x 6 3/4 in. (15.8 x 21.5 x 17.1 cm.); on wood base: 34 1/8 x 11 1/2 x 11 1/2 in. (86.6 x 29.0 x 29.0 cm.)
Type:
Sculpture
Date:
1924
Credit Line:
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966
William Kentridge edited by Rosalind Krauss ; essays and interviews by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, William Kentridge, Rosalind Krauss, Andreas Huyssen, Rosalind Morris, Maria Gough, Joseph Leo Koerner, and Margaret Koster Koerner
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Allan Sekula, 2011 August 20-2012 February 14. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project Search this
Century 21 Exposition (1962 : Seattle, Wash.) Search this
Type:
Interviews
Sound recordings
Place:
Germany -- description and travel
New York (N.Y.) -- Description and travel
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Douglas Crimp, 2017 January 3-4. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center.
Access of diaries and appointment books required written permission.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
André Emmerich Gallery records and André Emmerich papers, circa 1929-2009. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Leon Levy Foundation.
