Study Questions for Clement Greenberg: "Avant-Garde and Kitsch"
1. What two aspects of culture does Greenberg contrast in the opening section of the essay? Cite some contemporary examples.
2. What is Greenberg's stated objective for the essay?
3. What is "Alexandrianism" and how does it differ from "avant-gardism"? What work today would fit these definitions?
4. What, according to Greenberg, was the function of the avant-garde from the late 19th to the early 20th Century?
5. What is the shift that takes place in subject matter in avant-garde art and how does Greenberg explain this change?
6. What is the avant-garde's relationship to the ruling class? In what sense is this relationship a problem?
7. What is "kitsch" and where does it come from? How does it differ from folk culture and "formal" culture? How do all three differ from one another in function and appearance? How are leisure and literacy, urban life vs. country life, and class factors in Greenberg's explanation of the development of modern culture?
8. What are some of the dangers that Greenberg associates with kitsch?
9. How does Dwight MacDonald explain the development of kitsch in the former Soviet Union? What is Greenberg's response to MacDonald's view? What does the hypothetical story about the peasant viewing a Picasso and a Repin illustrate?
10. What, according to Greenberg, is the relationship between social order and artistic production? How has the orientation of the painter to his or her craft both changed and remained the same since the Middle Ages?
11. Why does Greenberg think it would be impossible for the peasant to appreciate Picasso even if Picasso's work was officially sanctioned by the State (i.e. the dominant culture)?
12. What is the role of kitsch in the fascist State? How was it used by Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union during the 1930s? What overriding reason does Greenberg give for the prevalence of kitsch? What is the alternative?
T. R. Quigley, 2005