The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 3: Affirmations and Refusals, 1950–1956

“No American art critic has been more influential than Clement Greenberg. The high priest of 'formalism', he set in motion an approach to art that has remained prevalent for nearly half a century... In much the same way that Jackson Pollock elevated American painting to international renown, Mr. Greenberg is the first American art critic whose work can be put on the shelf next to Roger Fry, Charles Baudelaire and other great European critics.” Deborah Soloman, New York Times.

“His work was so much a part of the dynamics of American culture between, roughly, the end of World War II and the mid-Sixties that it can't be ignored. No American art critic has produced a more imposing body of work: arrogant, clear, and forceful, a permanent rebuke to the jargon and obscurantism that bedeviled art criticism in his time and still does now.” Robert Hughes, New York Review of Books.