read this morning

Greenberg on Monet. Brilliant stuff. He was highly critical of Monet in the 1940’s and highly positive by the late 1950’s. What’s interesting is that both the critical and the positive pieces are insightful and largely convincing.

The main critique in the 1940’s was that Monet was confusing the aims of art and science with his paintings of isolated lily pads and so forth. By the 1950’s Greenberg had decided that the pendulum of appreciation had swung too far towards Cézanne and van Gogh, and that Monet once again deserved his due.

But wow, Greenberg can really write. No one writes better short things of three or so pages, I don’t think. I said a few weeks ago that Freud might be a slightly better 20th century prose writer, but Freud was at his best with medium-sized essays. Greenberg is very hard to beat in the 3-4 page range, just as Nietzsche is impossible to beat at 1.5 pages.

As for Monet, I also started out disliking him very much before later changing my mind. It was the “Haystacks” series that finally won me over.