its audience, and of the world in
general. He saw the artist's calling as
one of self-purification and art as a
phcnomen0n`characterizedanainly, if
not exclusively, by surface and pattern.
ln 1961 he wrote that the unique and
proper nature of an art lay in what was
unique to the nature of the medium
. . . Realist, illusionist art had
disscmbled the medium, using art to
conceal art. Modernism used art to call
attention to art. The limitations that
constitute the medium of painting
the flat surface, the shape of the
support, the properties of pigment
were treated by the Old Masters as
negative factors that could be
acknowledged only implicitly or
indirectly Modernist painting has
come to regard these same limitations
as positive factors that are to be
acknowledged openly
Greenberg’s narrow and rigid
attitude found its justification in Post-
Painterly Abstraction (see p. 841), a
movement he ardently promoted and
supported. Eventually he aroused
hostility, first of all from Conceptual
artists; and his extreme version of
Modernism can now be seen as
belonging essentially to the Cold War
years and in some respects limited by
its reflection of that ideological and
political climate