the young painters of the late 1940’s

Having spent 1945 and 1946 ripping the mediocrity of the younger American painters, Greenberg sees a 1947 show of younger French painters at the Whitney, and decides that they are even worse:

“Neo-cubists, neo-realists, neo-surrealists, neo-expressionists– they are alike in their brittle color and their excited and equally brittle design. Where their American equivalents tend to mud or garishness, French painters tend, apparently, to confetti and neon lights. If the Americans seem stodgy and dull, the liveliness and the knowingness of the French are empty. Nor, contrary to expectations, are the French more facile or tasteful. They are just as coarse, just as inept for the most part– and hysterical in the bargain.”