What fall?
On Art Czar: The Rise & Fall of Clement Greenberg by Alice Goldfarb Marquis
This reader was momentarily put off by the title of this fascinating book. Clement Greenberg was like no one else, and he held fast to his opinions. He was in no sense a czar. Nor would he have wished to be so described. The word czar is now applied primarily to metropolitan gangsters by people who see it almost as a backhanded compliment. Like many a strong and sometimes peremptory character, Greenberg had his detractors. But if a czar had turned up at his front door, Greenberg would have given him the bums rush.
Nor did Greenberg have a fall. As Ms. Marquis tells it, Greenberg in the last years of his life was stripped by a larcenous accountant of some $750,000. That was not a fall, but it was a considerable misfortune. Two days after his death on May 4th, 1994, he was described by Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times as...
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