Clement Greenberg and Modernist Aesthetics Clement Greenberg was a rare character in history: the right person in the right place at the right time, writing the right things to the right people. A New York intellectual and art critic, Greenberg was uniquely positioned...
FROM DENIS DIDEROT TO THÉOPHILE GAUTIER The Origins of Art Criticism: 1750-1850 According to Théophile Gautier, writing in 1854, “In his immortal Salons, Diderot founded the criticism of painting.” Indeed Gautier modeled his method of discussing...
ART AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT Rococo and Revolution From the early eighteenth century on, the visual arts, from painting to interior décor, were markers of class and harbingers of the Revolution to come. A late expression of the pompous and grandiose Baroque, the soft...
THE RISE OF NEOCLASSICISM The origins of Neoclassicism in art, architecture and interior décor was the excavation of long buried Roman cities, Pompeii and Herculaneum in the mid-eighteenth century. A popular correction of the late Baroque style and the ornamental...
