Clement Greenberg was born the same year as Francis Bacon, in 1909. Greenberg was the most influential art critic of this day and time. Essentially Greenberg was the difference between an artist making it big in the world or flopping right on his/her face.
In comment to Francis Bacon's art, Greenberg said that Bacon was not a Modernist, instead he was "attempting to make art in a redundant grand manner."* In 1968 Greenberg was interviewed concerning what he thought about Francis Bacon as an artist.
"I go for his things at the same time that I see through and around them. It's as though I can watch him putting his pictures together ... I behold the cheapest, coarsest, least felt application of paint matter I can visualize, along with the most transparent, up-to-date devices ... Bacon is the one example in our time of inspired safe taste - taste that's inspired in the way in which it searches out the most up-to-date of your 'rehearsed responses.' Some day, if I live long enough, I'll look back on Bacon's art as a precious curiosity of our period."*
*Brighton, Andrew. "Francis Bacon's Modernism." Critical Quarterly 42, no. 1 (Spring2000 2000): 137. Literary Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed April 28, 2014).
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