Greenberg on the emergence of New York

This is from a 1967 interview. Up through the mid-1940’s, it’s striking how down he always was on American art, and how insistent he was that Paris was still the only place to be. That changed in around 1947/48, though it took a few years to register with the public.

Q: Mr. Greenberg, you are known as one of the earliest champions of advanced American art. What were some of the factors that contributed to its breakthrough during and after World War II?

A: One thing I do know is that artists in New York during the latter 1930’s tried harder, informed themselves more about what was going on elsewhere –especially in Paris– than artists in Paris itself did in those years. I was in Paris for the first time in the spring of 1939 and was somewhat startled by how unknowing the few younger artists I met there were by comparison with their counterparts in New York. In New York at that time the younger artists on 8th Street –especially those who had some contact with Hans Hofmann, even if they weren’t his students– were looking at everything and at the same time bearing down on themselves. They knew Matisse better than he was known in Europe and, as I think, valued him more. They knew Klee, they knew Miró, they knew Mondrian. In Paris –even though Miró and Mondrian were then living there– these artists seemed to have less status, less authority, as precedents than in New York. On top of that, for some mysterious reason, proficiency in painting –if you can call it that– prowess in painting, did seem to cross the ocean back in those years; I mean that the general level of ambitious painting became higher over here than in France. I realized that only in the 1950’s and was as much surprised as anyone, even though I was registering something that had already been true for some dozen years…

Paris was the unrivaled center in art in the 150 years before 1950. If you weren’t in Paris or in touch with Paris you were condemned to be a more or less provincial or minor artist.