<P> Clement Greenberg proclaimed Abstract Expressionism and Jackson Pollock in particular as the epitome of aesthetic value . Greenberg supported Pollock's work on formalistic grounds as simply the best painting of its day and the culmination of an art tradition going back via Cubism and Cézanne to Monet, in which painting became ever "purer" and more concentrated in what was "essential" to it, the making of marks on a flat surface . </P> <P> Jackson Pollock's work has always polarised critics . Harold Rosenberg spoke of the transformation of painting into an existential drama in Pollock's work, in which "what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event". "The big moment came when it was decided to paint' just to paint' . The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value--political, aesthetic, moral ." </P> <P> One of the most vocal critics of Abstract Expressionism at the time was New York Times art critic John Canaday . Meyer Schapiro and Leo Steinberg were also important postwar art historians who voiced support for Abstract Expressionism . During the early to mid sixties younger art critics Michael Fried, Rosalind Krauss and Robert Hughes added considerable insights into the critical dialectic that continues to grow around Abstract Expressionism . </P> <P> Feminist art criticism emerged in the 1970s from the wider feminist movement as the critical examination of both visual representations of women in art and art produced by women . It continues to be a major field of art criticism . </P>

Who were the painters that were ridiculed by critics for their style in the late nineteenth century