Clement Greenberg; Leading Art Critic, Essayist

Clement Greenberg, a seminal art critic who helped identify and establish the Abstract Expressionism art movement and who championed Jackson Pollock as its major star, has died. He was 85.

Greenberg died Saturday of complications of emphysema in New York City, where he had spent most of his life.

“Let nothing come between you and art, nothing, no ideas, nothing,” he once said in describing the work of an art critic. “The idea is to see enough: That’s how you acquire taste. Don’t even look at the name on the label.”

Greenberg’s learned commentary appeared in the magazines Partisan Review, Commentary, the Nation, Saturday Evening Post, Arts and Art International. His cumulative writings were published by the University of Chicago Press in several volumes titled “The Collected Essays and Criticism.”

Born in the Bronx to Russian Jewish immigrants, Greenberg began drawing by age 4, only to have his unsupportive parents throw away his artwork. Greenberg studied literature at Syracuse University, then taught himself Latin and German and supported himself during the Depression by translating books.

He was hired as a U.S. Customs clerk in 1937, which proved a major turning point in his life. He spent idle hours in the appraisers division writing essays on culture.

Soon those essays were being published by Partisan Review, the unofficial journal of New York intellectuals. In the small related American art community, Greenberg came to know and to praise Pollock and to critique and support Abstract Expressionism.

Greenberg also frequently visited artists in their studios to offer advice.

He had devoted himself to lecturing for the last three decades, and spoke in 1982 in the Los Angeles area.

He is survived by his wife, Janice, a daughter, Sarah, and a brother, Martin.