Introduction
“Modernist Painting” by Clement Greenberg is his first essay on modernism, and it is notable for showing his mid-life perception and importance of the avant-garde. Although he does not mention the term “avant-garde,” instead, he uses the words “authentic art,” He identifies Modernism with the intensification and according to him the essence of Modernism lies in the characteristic methods. He considers Immanuel Kant to be the first Modernist. He describes how Modernist trend applies to the painting disciplines, how the transparency of medium and technique is used on the flat plane of the canvas. He compares the Modernist painting trends to the self-critical movements in other disciplines. For him, the Modernism criticizes from the inside while the Enlightenment criticized from the outside.
Greenberg seems to shift his political position towards a Kantian formalist from an intellectual Marxist, as the territory of the avant-garde was taken over by popular culture. He states that art can save itself by being its purest form and by removing any external effects. For him, art was created for the sake of art. He focused on the limitations of the flat surface of canvas and the properties of the pigments. In his words, “The first mark made on a canvas destroys its
literal and utter flatness, and the result of the marks made on it by an artist like Mondrian is still a kind of illusion that suggests a kind of the third dimension” (Greenberg, 1961). In modernist paintings, the viewer is made aware of the flatness and notes the picture first, before going deeper into the content. The Modernist painting resists the sculptural and illusionistic space and seeks self-definition, thus becoming purer in the process.
Greenberg equates the artist to the scientists who test and experiment with their work. “Modernist art belongs to the same specific cultural tendency as modern science, and this is of the highest significance as a historical fact.” (Greenberg, 1961)His writing concerned itself more with the “experience” of the aesthetic and how one looks at a work of modern art. He looks back in time and how Modernist art developed over the years. Apparently, the progress of art lies in the continuity of it. Even though Greenberg points out that the first pigment on a canvas destroys its virtual flatness, still, the artistic development includes some of the masters of flatness that seem to get ignored by Greenberg.
Greenberg’s theory was reasonably attractive to art historians and critics because he turned art into a scientific method and verifiable ways to evaluate art. Thus, he was more objective rather than subjective. He made certain points on Modernism by stating that it defined itself by self-criticality and looked within in its irreducible identity and pure form. For him, abstraction was more progressive than representational art, and it was Impressionism by Claude Monet that advanced painting the furthest and not the Cubist phase of George Braque or Pablo Picasso. He argued that the painting had to separate itself from other art forms so as to return to its roots. He leaves no scope to understand other reasons for the evolution of painting. According to him, the illusionist art used art to conceal art.
In his concluding argument, he says art moves constantly forward remains in continuity. Modernist Painting moves beyond the flatness of painting and struggles to get free of the conventional narrative within it. Greenberg concludes how the art of painting has evolved in its pure forms. Still, he argues that it does not mean that all paintings must lose all identity and become abstract. Sculpture adds the illusion of dimensionality in art while literature lends it the task of the narrative. Greenberg’s theories were perhaps limited by the narrower definition of what art could be. Although Greenberg may no longer be as relevant, still his formulations continue to carry a powerful presence in one way or the other.
References
Greenberg .C. (1961). Modernist Painting, Smithsonian Retrieved from http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/modernism.html
