Greenberg and Self Criticism & Selz’s Gestural Abstraction Clement Greenberg wrote an article on modern painting and self criticism. In it, he explains how many artists style of art has changed from more tradition to fit a certain medium, thus creating self-criticism among the works. Peter Selz’s introduction to gestural abstraction talks about how the dominant art mode during and after WWII had been labeled abstract expressionism in which artists from America and Europe, in search for their own identities, were displaying works that dealt with geometric shapes, cubes, and circles. The following paragraphs will explain why modern painting created self criticism among the artists according to Greenberg as well as three artists from both Greenberg’s article and Selz’s introduction that fit in that perception. Modern paintings produce self-criticism according to Greenberg by claiming that the task of self-criticism eliminated the specific effects of each works of art and every effect