"Perhaps the greatest change that industrialism (along with Protestantism and rationalism) has made in daily life is to separate work from leisure in a radical and almost absolute way. Once the efficacy of work began to be more clearly and fully appreciated, work had to become more efficacious in itself — that is, more efficient. To this end, it had to be more sharply separated from everything that was not work; it had to be made more concentratedly and purely itself — in attitude, in method and, above all, in time. Moreover, under the rule of efficiency, seriously purposeful activity in general tended to become assimilated to work. The effect of all this has been to reduce leisure to an occasion more exclusively of passivity, to a breathing spell and interlude; it has become something peripheral."
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"The Plight of Culture" (1953), p. 31
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clement_Greenberg
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Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994) was an American art critic known for his advocacy of Abstract Expressionism.
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