the last book I ever read (Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word, excerpt seven)

from The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe:

One day—in 1963, it must have been—I ran into a magazine editor, a culturatus of sorts, and I happened to bring up the subject of Abstract Expressionism, whereupon he told me with a tone that indicated I must be the only person in town who hadn’t gotten the inside news: “Listen, Abstract Expressionism is dead. It’s been finished off by a professor at Hunter College, a guy named Leo Steinberg.”

I don’t know that Steinberg finished off Abstract Expressionism. It only needed a little push. But Steinberg was certainly one of the authorities who made it okay to like Pop Art.