MEDIA FORMALISM

Critic Clement Greenberg.

A brand of formalism different from the classical formalist positions.

Greenberg proposes an interpretation of the history of the last 150 years of art, according to which modernism is a natural response to the intellectual and cultural currents of the times.

Tendency of this period in all fields has been the drive toward self‑criticism:

"The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself not in order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence" (Greenberg- "Modernist Painting")

Artists (painters) bring out what is unique and essential to painting, removing whatever factors are accidental to painting, such as, according to Greenberg, representation and illusion. The end result is often abstract paintings that are about the conventions and limitations of painting.

Painting is its exploration of its own limitations, such as two‑dimensionality and the shape of the frame. These qualities are very different from the sublimity, beauty, or significance that classical formalists find in the formal qualities of artworks.

Shares a fundamental principle with the classical formalism we have examined: autonomy.

"Each art had to determine, through the operations peculiar to itself, the effects peculiar and exclusive to itself. By doing this each medium, would, to be sure, narrow its area of competence, but at the same time it would make its possession of this area all the more secure." (Greenberg- "Modernist Painting")

Similar to Formalism

· Conception of a Self‑validating Autonomy

· No values external to the artwork

· Purist form of art for art's sake

Differs from Formalism

Considering art is about art

(The distinction is between first‑order (or ordinary) use of language to talk about the world and second‑order use of language to talk about language rather than the world. In second‑order study of language, the language itself is the object of study.)

The specific appropriate object of investigation is what he calls the limiting conditions or norms of an art medium.

Investigating the conventions of an art is the same as investigating the medium:

"It quickly emerged that the unique and proper area of competence of each art coincided with all that was unique to the nature of its medium.”

Limiting condition of painting is flatness (two‑dimensionality), the enclosing frame shape, and "norms of finish, of paint texture, and of value and color contrast.”

Artists (should) examine the conventions and nature of the medium, that is, they mention forms instead of using them.

Four Central Propositions:

1. Every art has a nature, which it has uniquely determined by the norms governing the art.

2. The nature of an art is identical to the nature of its medium.

3. Those elements of artworks that concern the nature of the medium are critical for appreciation and criticism of artworks.

4. The best artworks are those that explore their nature (within the constraints of their art‑historical context.)

Propositions (1) and (2) are implied throughout "Modernist Painting."

Propositions (3) and (4) are obvious critical principles suggested by Greenberg's various remarks about the history of art.

Derive a general, if as yet sketchy, theory of art from these four propositions if we add a fifth proposition defining what art is,

5. A necessary and sufficient condition for X to be a work of art is that X be a work in some art medium.

Problems with Media Formalism:

· Each of propositions (1) through (4) is questionable.

· It is difficult to categorize all works of arts into some medium or another.

· Further, do art media each have an individual essence?

· What support is there for the evaluative claims, (3) and (4), which say that we ought to look for this exploration in every artwork and that those artworks that most plainly and consistently explore such issues are the best artworks?

· Many practices can be construed as consistent in their own way. That does not make them necessarily valuable.

If we view the "progress" of art historically as aiming toward the goal of pure painting, painting with all irrelevant features removed, then those artists who have been and are now contributing to this goal may seem to be producing art that is in accord with their historical task and therefore more valuable.

But here we are assuming that there is a historical process inevitably leading toward this goal a picture of history rejected by many thinkers and also that the value of art is to be found only in contributions to this "progress."

To summarize: For the media formalist, form has to do with the relation of a work to the limitations and norms of its medium. Media formalism thus has difficulty accounting for work in mixed media or in no salient medium. This theory ignores the first‑order sensory, emotional, or mimetic responses to a work almost entirely in favor of a second‑order response to a work as art about the nature of art.