Greenberg indicates that the purpose of his article is to plot the rationale of 'Modernist Art' The argument fundamental to article is his belief that Modernism arises from a desire to distinguish the arts one from the other. In an earlier article [ 'Towards a Newer Laocoon']1 Greenberg states "It is by virtue of its medium that each art is unique and strictly itself'. By using the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticise that discipline, an approach used by the philosopher Emmanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason to examine logic, one should reach that which makes the art unique. He further argues that "Purity in art consists in the acceptance, willing acceptance, of the limitations of the medium of the specific art."2. That of course raises the issue of what the limitations are for painting.
Although he suggests that Kantian methods have been used to arrive at the answer he fails to show how the conclusion was reached which leaves the reader having to accept it as a given truth. With this proviso we learn from him: "The limitations that constitute the medium of painting - [are] the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment...."3. It is legitimate to ask if any other art form has these limitations because if the answer is Yes then painting is not made unique by these limitations and is therefore part of a wider set of arts that are limited by a flat surface and thus undermining Greenberg's whole argument. An immediate art form that springs to mind is that of photography where the limitations are almost identical. Certainly there is the flat surface and the shape of the support (I make the assumption that the 'support' is the paper itself) and one could argue that ink pigments are of the same ilk as paint used by an artist. Perhaps stretching the argument too far it could also be argued that television and cinema have the same limitations.
Supporters of Greenberg could, and probably would, argue that photography is not an 'art' and therefore Greenberg's argument remains sound. However the borderline between painting and photography in the final outcome of the work is blurred to say the least. Lets put the argument to one side because the purpose of this blog is not to argue one way or the other.
In the article read for this blog 4 Greenberg develops his argument. Again no evidence is provided for his assertion that there was a risk that "art was in danger of being assimilated into entertainment and that entertainment was at risk of being assimilated into therapy". He continues "The arts could save themselves from this levelling down only by demonstrating that the kind of experience they provided was valuable in its own right and not to be obtained from any other kind of activity" 5. In my view this does not necessarily mean that it is not of the class 'entertainment' because many activities that are widely accepted as entertainment could argue that what they provide is valuable in its own right and not available elsewhere.
He makes a more assertive statement: "Flatness alone was unique and exclusive to that art.... Flatness, two-dimensionality was the only condition painting shared with no other art."6 As noted above this may be true or not and as will be shown later not even Greenberg is wholly convinced of the truth of the statement. Assuming for the moment that the statement is true we then need to discover how the Modernists tackled this limitation in their work.
Greenberg offers the following : "What it [Modernist Painting] has abandoned in principle is the representation of the kind of space that recognisable, three-dimensional objects can inhabit... Three-dimensionality is the province of sculpture, and for the sake of its own autonomy painting has had above all to divest itself of everything it might share with sculpture."7 Yet can this be true or indeed is it possible? One element that the artist cannot control is the viewer, a human being, subject to all the contraries of both his/her own unique make up biologically and that of experience gained through the years. Most humans attempt to make sense of objects, including paintings, however obscure or clueless the evidence, in order to fit that object within a class that he/she understands. Faced with say a Mondrian we will attempt to make sense of the rectangles of colour and their placing by applying what we 'know'. The unique result for us may not be what the artist intended or anticipated. For most of us our world is three-dimensional and we are in a sense programmed to try to create 3D objects from the scantiest of information.
Am I convinced by Greenberg's article. In brief - No. Not least because towards the end of the article he tells the reader: "It is understood, I hope, that in plotting the rationale of Modernist art I have had to simplify and exaggerate. The flatness towards which Modernist painting orients itself can never be an utter flatness."8 He is saying that the evidence that he has presented for our consideration has been changed and one must conclude from this that the changes made are such as to support his argument. Perhaps the most telling comment is "No one artist was, or is yet, consciously aware of this tendency, nor could an artist work successfully in conscious awareness of it"9. If this is the case then it is difficult if not impossible to understand how the movement happened. The only explanation is that the term 'Modernist' is simply an umbrella applied for convenience to a number of disparate styles that may or may not have been attempts to paint within the constraints of the flat surface.
In conclusion I am not convinced that Greenberg has successfully shown that painting is unique and has fundamentals that it does not share with other arts.
References:
1 Greenberg Clement: Towards a New Laocoon 1940 In: Art in Theory 1900 - 2000 An Anthology of Changing Ideas; eds Charles Harrison & Paul Wood New Edition 2003 Blackwell Publishing p566
2 op cit p566
3 Greenberg Clement: Modernist Painting In: Art in Theory 1900 - 2000 An Anthology of Changing Ideas; eds Charles Harrison & Paul Wood New Edition 2003 Blackwell Publishing p 775
4 op cit pp 773 -779
5 op cit p 774
6 op cit p 775
7 op cit p775
8 op cit p777
9 op cit p778
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