A N G E L A K I journal of the theoretical humanities volume 7 number 1 april 2002
he collected art criticism of Michael Fried Tappeared in 1998 with the title Art and Objecthood. The centerpiece of the book is the essay by the same name, FriedÕs most famous statement regarding the art of the 1960s. In this essay, Fried had articulated a critique of the move toward ÒminimalismÓ or, in FriedÕs own preferred term, ÒliteralismÓ in art. Whereas painting involved the illusion of space and the relation of parts, literalism aimed at a unitary, three-dimensional object. These literal objects would not be sculptures, however; they would henry staten have a wholeness and singleness of ÒshapeÓ inspired by recent painting, above all the work of Frank Stella, that had reduced painting to its most minimal, two-dimensional elements and CLEMENT GREENBERG, foregrounded the shape of the support. This new RADICAL PAINTING, kind of painting, Donald Judd remarked at the time, Òoverpowers the earlier paintingÓ because it AND THE LOGIC OF is Ònearly an entity, one thingÓ; but it also exhausted the specific art of painting, with its MODERNISM restriction to two dimensions, and necessitated literalismÕs opening to three dimensions. viable in the contemporary crisis, a painting had To the arguments of the minimalists/literalists to Òdefeat or suspend its own [literal] object- Fried responded that literalism was the Ònegation hoodÓ by the assertion of pictorial shape (ibid.). of artÓ because it was, in the terms of a complex In the introduction to the collected work Fried argument that I cannot reproduce here, nothing updates, but fundamentally reaffirms, the judg- more than Òa new genre of theaterÓ (153). In ments about contemporary art at which he had FriedÕs view, it was imperative for painting to arrived when he wrote the earlier work, and notes fend off the literalist challenge by observing the that he stopped writing art criticism in the 1970s distinction between literal and pictorial shape, because he was out of sympathy with the direc- thus disproving the charge that the art of paint- tion art had taken and saw no point in continu- ing was now exhausted. The shape of which Judd ing to reiterate his opposition. spoke was Òshape as a fundamental property of Just as Art and Objecthood appeared, [literal] objectsÓ; but this sense of shape was however, Artforum (Sept. 1998) carried a review distinct from the type of shape with which the by Fried of monochrome paintings by the New painter is concerned, Òshape as a medium of York painter Joseph Marioni. In this remarkable paintingÓ (151) Ð ÒpictorialÓ shape. In order for document Fried declared, against all expectation, the specificity of the art of painting to remain that MarioniÕs monochromes were Òpaintings in
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/02/010073-16 © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd and the Editors of Angelaki DOI: 10.1080/0969725022014206 5
7 3 radical painting the fullest and most exalted sense of the word,Ó that might have surprised Greenberg (as it does and went on to this conclusion: Fried). Radical Painting has taken widely diver- gent forms in the course of the two decades I have É I consider Marioni to be one of the foremost been following it, and I will not try to survey this painters at work anywhere at the present, and variety; but Marioni is, along with his former the great and thought-provoking surprise his work has given me is not only that it tran- collaborator, the Cologne painter GŸnther scends the previous limitations of the mono- Umberg, the most theoretically minded of the chrome but also that it is the first body of work group, and his paintings manifest in an exemplary I have seen that suggests that the Minimalist way the relation of Radical Painting to the reduc- intervention might have had productive conse- tionist Òlogic of modernism.Ó1 quences for painting of the highest ambition. Now, whereas Greenberg in some famous Simply put, the Minimalist hypostatization of statements declared flatness the irreducible objecthood É seems to have led in MarioniÕs element in the art of painting that modernism art to a new, more deeply founded integration had uncovered, Marioni focuses his meditation of color, amateriality, and support, which is to on the question of articulated paint or painted say to an affirmation of the continued vitality color Ð not paint as it exists in the tube but as it of painting that has something of the character of a new beginning. (149) exists when applied to a particular support by a particular means of application.2 He uses acrylic, Who is Marioni, and what has he wrought that it applied with a roller to linen on a wooden could cause a theorist as brilliant and polemical stretcher, always in a top-down direction, two to as Fried to change his mind in such a funda- six coats of varying hues, but such as to produce mental way about the possibilities of mono- a predominantly unitary color-image, each coat chrome Ð a type of work that, until he saw monochrome and forming a more or less all-over MarioniÕs work, Fried associated with mere liter- skin, with the texture of the linen visible to vary- alism and considered Òa vehicle for a hackneyed ing degrees through the paint or at the edges. His theoretical/ideological stanceÓ (ibid.)? Even more aesthetic aim is to create a total effect out of the important: could Fried be right in his assessment relation between the specific hues he attains, the of MarioniÕs achievement, and, if so, what would texture of the paint, the relation of the paint to this mean for the standard narratives about the linen, and the size and shape of the picture modernism in painting, and, more broadly, for support; this sense of the total physical presence our sense of the fate of painting (whose ÒdeathÓ of the painting is what Fried refers to when he has been routinely declared for decades now) and mentions the effect on MarioniÕs work of the of art as a whole in the era of postmodernity? Òminimalist intervention.Ó However, Marioni is I will give a quick introductory account of very insistent that his paintings should not cross Marioni and his work, then turn to the metacriti- the line into literalness and become literalist or cal issues raised by his work and its associated minimalist Òpainted objectsÓ; they remain, and theoretical apparatus. Marioni has been living and are to be judged aesthetically as, paintings, and painting in New York since the early 1970s, but their predominant effect is of breathtaking color. his career for many years was mainly in Europe, The crucial figure in MarioniÕs sense of the especially Germany. His work has special signifi- physical presence of the painting as painting, as cance in my eyes because it is not an isolated structure of paint plus support, is, however, not phenomenon, but part of a loosely structured any minimalist but the painter Robert Ryman, movement that has shown under different names without whose work it is impossible to under- but has most consistently called itself ÒRadical stand MarioniÕs project. Schematically, then, Painting,Ó and which has been quietly carrying on Radical Painting of the sort done by Marioni is the project of Òreduction to the essenceÓ of the art modernism as analyzed by GreenbergÕs logic, of painting that Clement Greenberg, and Fried in transformed by the achievement of Ryman, and his wake, did so much to theorize some decades turned toward the exploration of the entire spec- ago Ð although this project has gone in a direction trum of painted color.
7 4 staten de duve’s interpretation of greenberg istic that is the essence and this one characteris- tic cannot be shared with any other art. By parity GreenbergÕs narrative about modernism has of argument, one would have to conclude that recently been massively re-examined and recon- sound is inessential to poetry because it is shared 3 textualized by Thierry De Duve. De Duve has with music, and the history of modernist poetry, heightened the philosophical stakes in this discus- with its recurrent tendency toward pure musical- sion by extensive analysis of the conflicting ity, would be an unaccountable mistake. Kantian elements in GreenbergÕs problematic Ð In any case, this was the conclusion at which the fact that for Greenberg the beauty of a paint- Greenberg arrived, a conclusion that, on De ing always had to be evaluated by a Kantian judg- DuveÕs account, led him into an intolerable ment of taste, while on the other hand the ÒlogicÓ contradiction. For if mere flatness is the essence of modernism that Greenberg equally derived of the art of painting, then, as Greenberg from (his reading of) Kant implied that judgments remarked in 1962 in ÒAfter Abstract of taste were no longer necessary. Greenberg Expressionism,Ó a stretched, unpainted canvas wrote in his 1960 essay ÒModernist PaintingÓ that could be experienced as a painting or, in the Òthe essence of Modernism,Ó as observable in slightly weasally term that he actually used, a Kant, Òthe first real Modernist,Ó lay Òin the use of Òpicture,Ó Òthough not necessarily as a successful characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize one.Ó5 According to De Duve (and I was the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but surprised to find this out), no one ever presented in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of a mere unpainted canvas as a painting; mono- 4 competenceÓ (85). Hence modernism in art chrome or quasi-monochrome was thus the clos- meant that each art was concerned with Òall that est thing to the limit-condition of the art of was unique in the nature of its medium,Ó and Òthe painting at which modernism in fact arrived, Òthe task of self-criticism became to eliminate from the zero degree of paintingÓ (217). But when specific effects of each art any and every effect Greenberg saw monochrome paintings, rather that might conceivably be borrowed from or by than thinking that they had arrived at the the medium of any other art. Thus would each art essence, he dismissed them as Òfamiliar and be rendered ÔpureÕ ÉÓ (86). The quest for purity, slick.Ó Monochrome, he judged, had become in the case of painting, yielded the reduction to Òalmost overnight another taming conventionÓ mere flatness: that Òautomatically declared itself to be artÓ (De It was the stressing of the ineluctable flatness Duve 251). of the surface that remained É more funda- If a work automatically declares itself to be mental than anything else to the processes by art, then no act of aesthetic judgment is required which pictorial art criticized and defined itself from the viewer; yet Greenberg was irrevocably under Modernism. For flatness alone was committed to the necessity of aesthetic judgment. unique and exclusive to pictorial art. The De Duve comments: enclosing shape of the picture was a limiting condition, or norm, that was shared with the Once an unpainted canvas can be called a art of the theater; color was a norm and a picture or a painting, then it is automatically means shared not only with the theater, but called art. With the dismissal of the very also with sculpture. É [F]latness was the last expendable convention of modernist only condition painting shared with no other painting Ð that the canvas be painted at all Ð art É (87) the specific [i.e., the art of painting] surren- ders to the generic [ÒartÓ in general]. The The logic of this famous argument is consider- consequences branch out into two possibili- ably less than compelling. Leaving aside its ques- ties. Either É the making and appreciation of tionable relation to KantÕs project, its shakiest art require nothing but a mere identification assumption is this: that if there is to be an predicated on the conceptual ÒlogicÓ of essence of painting, that essence must be modernism, and aesthetic judgment is no absolutely singular, there must be one character- longer necessary; É or aesthetic judgment is
7 5 radical painting
still necessary. But the pressure that the ited new realm of freedom needed to keep clear conventions of painting had put on its practice of the specificity of sculpture as well as that of is now nil É (De Duve 222) painting; the new minimalist or literalist art could flourish only in the specificity of the space On De DuveÕs reading, then, if there is a reduc- between the older genres. tive ÒlogicÓ of modernism, it follows that, once Joseph Kosuth went even further than Judd. the reduction is complete, there will no longer be For him, Òthe propositions of art are not factual, any room for judgments regarding the beauty of but linguistic in character Ð that is, they do not the work, either on the part of the viewer or on describe the behavior of physical or even mental the part of the artist as he creates his work; or, objects; they express definitions of art, or the conversely, if there is to be aesthetic judgment, formal consequences of definitions of art. Òpurism or reductivism is no longer tenableÓ Accordingly, we can say that art operates on a (ibid.). Hence, GreenbergÕs choice in favor of logic.Ó This new logic leaves specificity entirely aesthetic judgment meant that he had to abandon behind, for the artistÕs true task Ònow means to ÒmodernismÓ with its progressive paring away of question the nature of art. If one is questioning nonessentials from the medium. the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning De DuveÕs account, which skillfully exploits the nature of art. É ThatÕs because the word art the weaknesses in GreenbergÕs own formulations is general and the word painting is specificÓ (in (importing, however, these same weaknesses into De Duve 245). his own argument Ð as we will see), gains its plau- In the space of art-in-general, anything what- sibility not only from its elegant formulation but ever could be an artwork; according to Kosuth, from the historical sequel, the ÒGreenbergian the fiat of the artist and not anything intrinsic to anti-GreenbergianismÓ of Donald Judd and the work decreed that something be art. But this Joseph Kosuth that developed the terms of was the door to Ògeneric artÓ that Duchamp had GreenbergÕs logic uncompromisingly away from already opened fifty years earlier with his ready- the specificity of the art of painting and toward mades, particularly the famous urinal (hence the the negation of aesthetic judgment. Looking at title of De DuveÕs book); the aftermath of the StellaÕs black paintings in 1962 with GreenbergÕs implosion of modernism was thus, according to doctrine in mind, Judd and his generation of De Duve, simply the final triumph of DuchampÕs artists had Òno alternative other than to pursue intervention. the modernist tradition even beyond the literal monochrome where it actually meets its endÓ from ryman to radical painting (231). StellaÕs paintings, which seemed to mark the limit to which the modernist reduction could The elegance of De DuveÕs argument conceals a be pushed, were interpreted by Judd as really serious flaw, one that becomes evident in light of more like objects than paintings. Ò[M]ost of the the retrospective action on the history of works,Ó Judd wrote, ÒÉ suggest slabs, since they modernism of painters like Ryman, Marioni, and project more than usualÓ (cited in De Duve 236). Umberg. The flaw is De DuveÕs assimilation of But Judd argued that three-dimensional Òactual the monochrome to the blank canvas, as though spaceÓ is Òintrinsically more powerful and the conclusion drawn from the possibility of an specific than painting on a flat surface.Ó unpainted painting Ð Òthe pressure that the ÒBecause the nature of three dimensions isnÕt set, conventions of painting had put on its practice is given beforehand, something credible can be now nilÓ Ð were with equal validity to be drawn made, almost anythingÓ (in De Duve 235). As from monochrome, so that, in the absence of these remarks indicate, Judd was still awkwardly actual unpainted canvases, the Òliteral mono- trying to work with GreenbergÕs idea of speci- chromeÓ would mark the place where the ficity while loosening the traditional constraints modernist tradition Òactually meets its endÓ to which Greenberg had bound it: JuddÕs new (231). It is easy to see how this assimilation could three-dimensionality in order to open its unlim- slip, uncriticized, into De DuveÕs argument on
7 6 staten the basis of StellaÕs early work, which teetered on contemporary theorists, including De Duve, a the edge of the minimalist reduction; more vision of pure Hegelian Aufhebung in which the puzzling is how De Duve can praise Ryman as a materiality of art is entirely sublated into the great painter but quickly assimilate his work, realm of Òconvention,Ó with convention itself because it Òacknowledge[s] the readymade,Ó to understood as ultimately discursive in nature. the tradition of Duchamp (277). For RymanÕs The emergence of conceptualism can then be work in fact exploits to an unparalleled degree narrated as the logical culmination of the ÒlogicÓ the pressure that the conventions of painting put of modernism. The narrative of sublation cannot, on its practice. however, do justice to the vital tradition of work Ryman has made an entire career out of paint- within which the unsublated substratum of mate- ings that are nominally white, yet each of which riality of even the most readymade materials is a distinctive exploration of the immense vari- continues to function. Such work must either be ety of effects of texture, color, and reflectivity reinterpreted against the grain or rejected as that can be achieved within the limits of what merely naive. Yet the charge of naivety can language labels univocally (and quite inade- scarcely be sustained in the face of the fact that quately) as ÒwhiteÓ; of the interaction of paint Radical Painting is constituted through and with the immense variety of surfaces to which it through as a continuing critical reflection, carried can be applied (linen, plastic, paper, metal, etc.); on within and beyond the terms of the dialectic and of the thematization, as part of the formal of modernism developed by Greenberg and whole, of the other, previously merely substruc- Fried, on the techniques and conventional mate- tural elements, such as the stretcher, the size of riality constituting the art of painting at the the brush and the amount of paint it will hold, present moment in culture history. the means of attachment to the wall (a very rich Ryman, a crucial figure in this alternative element for Ryman, who has used tape, bolts of tradition, is for his own part unequivocal about various sorts, tacks, and so forth, exposing them the controlling aim of his work: ÒThe basic prob- and making them part of the composition of the lem is what to do with paint. What is done with painting) Ð and even the wall itself, which paint is the essence of all painting.Ó6 The signif- Ryman also calculates as an integral part of the icance of the various material elements of the aesthetic structure of the painting. De Duve artwork is wholly reconfigured by their subordi- appears to leap from the fact that brushes, bolts, nation to this aim; and RymanÕs work, rather and so forth are manufactured objects to his than confirming the tradition of Duchamp, might conclusion that RymanÕs art is properly to be be more readily understood as the triumph of understood as an Òacknowledgment of the ready- making, in the entirely specific form of the art of made.Ó There is some interest in linking Ryman painting, over the readymade. Which is to say, in this way to the tradition of Duchamp; but the not making ex nihilo, as the pure originating artistic goal at which Ryman aims could scarcely power of a godlike genius (the model toward be more distant from DuchampÕs. The themati- which conceptualism gravitates), or as the impo- zation of readymade elements in RymanÕs work sition of form on formless matter, but as the is subordinate to a more comprehensive logic of process by which an artist operates the conven- making than that of the readymade Ð a logic, tional techniques and culturally worked-over older than modernism, that, before it involves materials of a historically evolved tekhne and their manufactured character, involves acknowl- evolves it further. (The crucial philosophical edging, and drawing out the consequences reference for this tradition would then be not of, the materiality of the artworkÕs component Kant Ð whose aesthetics is the product of the materials. Romantic episode that briefly carried aesthetic The characteristically modern critical aware- theory into the ether of the ineffable Ð but ness that there is no pure, raw materiality, that Aristotle, the original theorist of art as tekhne the materials of art come to us already worked who is much more plausibly considered the over by a long cultural history, becomes for many predecessor, even if not the actual inspiration, of
7 7 radical painting the modernist idea of the specific medium. I will would be a lineÓ (Ryman, in Sauer and say more about this at the conclusion of this RausmŸller 64Ð65). essay.) By contrast with RymanÕs endless experimen- Now, Ryman is often praised for his prag- tation, Marioni tinkers only in subtle ways with matic, non-theoretical stance toward his work; yet the format of his paintings, focusing instead on in his terse way he has situated himself very the exploration of an almost unlimited range of precisely as working within the selfsame ÒlogicÓ hue. And, because the logic of his work is more that was more fully theorized in the 1980s by homogeneously than RymanÕs a paint-logic, Marioni and Umberg in their jointly authored there is no place in it for composition or line, account of the nature of Radical Painting.7 There even as paint-edge (one reason why he paints are, Ryman says, three kinds of painting Òproce- with a roller). Yet, in part because of what he has dureÓ: representation, abstraction, and his own, learned from Ryman, MarioniÕs paintings are which has Òbeen called by various names, none of informed by the most refined awareness of the them very satisfactoryÓ: ÒThereÕs been full physicality of the painting as a composite Ôconcrete,Õ É itÕs been called ÔabsoluteÕ, Ônon- unity attached to a wall. The successive skins of objectiveÕ, and itÕs even been called ÔabstractionÕÓ paint interlock in such a way as to create a highly (a list to which we can now add ÒradicalÓ). specific visual effect, as though we were looking Ryman prefers to call it Òrealism,Ó because, into the paint, into a color-space that is not illu- unlike the first two procedures, this type of work sionistic but the actual space created between the involves no picture, no illusion, only the percep- layers of paint; yet the paint is not laid on tual reality of the painting itself. thickly, does not create what Greenberg called It is much harder to achieve freedom from Òfurtive bas relief.Ó The successive layers are representation than one might think. The very veil-like in their subtlety, and the weave of the fact that ÒrealismÓ has been confused with linen shows through (Marioni paints only on ÒabstractionÓ (a concept that retains the notion linen Ð eight different kinds depending on the of something represented, only ÒabstractlyÓ) texture and porosity he needs to achieve a shows that even the idea of purely non-represen- specific color-image). Marioni is also acutely tational painting is not easy to grasp. The notion attentive to the relation between the color he of a paintingÕs having no picture at all (not even creates and the shape and size of the painting. one that is abstractly gestured at), is deceptively The form, or Òstructure,Ó as he prefers to call it, simple to state, yet the radical extirpation of of the painting, arises, as in RymanÕs work Ð representation requires a thinking-through of although arguably, as Fried says, Òin a wholly every conventional and material element of the different spiritÓ Ð out of the interaction of all art of painting Ð a thinking-through that these elements; hence there is no question of produces a new logic of form. Realism, says falling into what Harold Rosenberg called mere Ryman, Òuses all the devices that are used by Òmatterism,Ó a false sense of aesthetic richness abstraction and representation such as composi- arising from the intoxication of the eye that puts tion and color complexity, and surface and light, itself to the tracing of raw physical textures in all and line and so on,Ó and yet all these terms are their endless variety. As always in art, it is a transformed when their logic is reconfigured matter of form; and yet this is form that is tied from scratch without the relation to figure. in the most intimate way to the materiality of Consider an element as simple and fundamental the medium. The Òpressure of the conventions as line: if line is still to be found in the ÒrealistÓ of the mediumÓ does not disappear but is or radical painting, it cannot be drawn, because transformed; painters are made more conscious drawing is a function Ð classically, for Aristotle of this pressure by their own increasing articula- as much as for Kant8 Ð the defining function, of tion of the mediumÕs material elements in all the procedure of representation. Hence: ÒI would their diversity, and this in turn leads to a yet not actually paint a line, I would paint an area of more refined articulation and a yet subtler paint and stop. And then at the edge of the paint consciousness.
7 8 staten
The difference between RymanÕs work and ignoring the micrology of the painterÕs practice MarioniÕs, and then again between either of theirs in its largely tacit interaction with the (material- and that of Umberg, shows how vast is the range ist) ÒlogicÓ according to which he works. In his of possibility of this fundamental or radical or reconstruction of GreenbergÕs thought De Duve realist exploration of painting. Like the work of pays lip service to the question of interaction the others, UmbergÕs has evolved through a with the medium: number of transformations, but in the 1980s As to the modernist artistÕs aesthetic judg- when he was collaborating with Marioni he ment, it has to be suggested, inspired, painted intensely black-looking paintings on thin provoked by or received from the medium sheets of aluminum, made of dry particles of itself, for the medium is the only subject graphite or ivory black, which he brushed dry matter of modernism and the locus of the onto moist dammar, horizontally and vertically, artistÕs aesthetic constraints. (214) thirty or forty layers, building up a porous texture that registers the disciplined lines of the Yet De Duve renders the reference to the inspi- brush strokes in the strikingly dry painted ration the painter receives from Òthe medium surface. This texture is extremely fragile: the itselfÓ effectively meaningless when, endorsing merest touch will destroy it. This fragility, GreenbergÕs narrowest interpretation of the logic together with the thinness of the support Ð which of modernism, he sublates the materiality of the makes the painting seem at first to be part of the medium into the idea of convention. In the wall Ð creates a sort of attenuation of materiality, context of this sublation, it is easy to conceive at least in the sense of withdrawal from three- monochrome as a bodiless Òzero degreeÓ of paint- dimensionality. Yet the paint, with its delicately ing that can provide no further inspiration (only refined yet charcoal-like texture, remains ÒconcoctionsÓ that are produced Òautomati- intensely material, and in the absence of any callyÓ). And the judgment of quality must now figure, shape, or line, the eye can only perceive hover in the thin air of a generalized or generic the color as bound to this materiality. Black is ÒartÓ that has no palpable relation to the speci- actualized in a specific painting-medium, and this ficity of a given medium, because this relation, if actualization can only be judged aesthetically in conceived as a logic, would result in the auto- the context of the specific history of aesthetic maticity that renders aesthetic judgment irrele- exploration out of which it comes, the context of vant. One should pay careful attention to the fundamental, concrete, absolute, realist, or radi- sleight of hand with the word medium that is cal painting. required for the logic of this argument: The increasingly articulate consciousness of Between content and form, between the the (historically, contextually significant) materi- generic value-judgment and the specific self- ality of painting, the nature of the pressure it criticism of the particular medium, there has exerts on the quest for aesthetic form, and the to be a mediation, but one that doesnÕt allow means by which that pressure can be put to for a deduction. If it did, it would mean that aesthetic account that painters in this tradition content Ð aesthetic value Ð could be inferred have developed, give the lie to GreenbergÕs own from the state of the medium. Conversely, it belief that painters had never been, and could not would mean that the medium could be delib- erately manipulated so as to produce content be, explicitly aware of the ÒlogicÓ that had been or quality, thus allowing for what Greenberg guiding their practice throughout the history of called ÒconcoctedÓ art. (213) modernism.9 Yet this increased awareness actu- ally has the opposite effect from that inferred by Only the evacuation of materiality from the De Duve, moving the art of monochrome farther notion of the medium can justify the imposition than ever away from any possibility of producing of the model of deduction on that of Òspecific a painting by mere deduction from a logic. self-criticism.Ó If what De Duve has identified is De Duve creates his dichotomy between a problem that indeed arose in the conceptualist aesthetic judgment and conceptual deduction by aftermath of modernism and that might well have
7 9 radical painting been given an essential impetus by GreenbergÕs flatness is here fully materialized in the ensemble Òlogic,Ó it is not a problem that is intrinsic to the of constituents that make up the painting, and notion of modernism as specific self-criticism, if what Greenberg responds to is not flatness as that notion is going to be construed not in the such but the integration of paint and support. odd and indefensible form of its reductio in a Yet Greenberg, under the influence of his blank canvas but in the most expansive terms Ð doctrine of pure opticality (another dogma of his terms that look to GreenbergÕs critical practice, theoretical apparatus, and one which I cannot which was, as Fried notes, separated by a ÒgulfÓ here try to reconcile with the line of thought that from his theory Ð and to the history of the leads to the blank canvas), oddly concludes that modernist reduction since 1962. the color is Òdisembodied,Ó and argues that the paintings need to be large so as not to be seen as an alternative version of greenberg discrete, tactile objects. Thus, the overarching ÒlogicÓ is not yet that of Radical Painting, but Greenberg was never in any danger, as De Duve GreenbergÕs articulation of the physical structure wants to think, of ÒsurrenderingÓ his taste in of the painting comes very close. front of StellaÕs black paintings (203Ð04). That a new doctrine of the evolution of Greenberg more than once indignantly denied modernism is brewing in such observations ever having confused the essentialism or purism becomes evident in the very same essay, ÒAfter of a painting with its quality, and any unbiased Abstract Expressionism,Ó in which Greenberg reading of his work will confirm this. He had a makes the remark about the blank canvas. remarkably catholic eye, and in fact confessed a Greenberg here rhapsodizes about the colorism of preference for figuration over abstraction. What Still, Rothko, and Newman in terms that I want to focus on here, however, is his enthusi- continue to resonate today and might be said to asm for color, which shows up repeatedly and presage the onset of Radical Painting (while which constitutes a sort of second, shadow contrasting sharply with the ambivalent tones in ÒlogicÓ leading to a different, and more pregnant, which a little later he speaks of the reduction to conclusion about the future of modernism than mere flatness): the one that leads to the blank canvas. His É the ultimate effect sought [by Still, Rothko, remarks on Morris LouisÕs work, for instance, and Newman] is one of more than chromatic reveal precisely the kind of eye for ÒliteralÓ qual- intensity; it is rather one of an almost literal ities that one needs in order to look at Radical openness that embraces and absorbs color in Painting: the act of being created by it. Openness, and not only in painting, is the quality that seems The fabric, being soaked in paint rather than most to exhilarate the attuned eyes of our time. merely covered with it, becomes paint in itself, É Let it suffice to say that by the new open- color in itself, like dyed cloth; the threaded- ness they have attained, [they] point to what I ness and wovenness are in the color. Louis would risk saying is the only way to high picto- usually contrives to leave certain areas in the rial art in the near future. (Emphasis added) canvas bare, and whether or not he whitens these afterwards with a thin gesso É the aspect ÒOpennessÓ is a difficult term to define, and of of bareness is retained. It is a gray-white or course Greenberg could not have had in mind white-gray bareness that functions as a color in quite the sort of thing that is achieved by Marioni its own right and on a parity with other colors; (radical painting cannot be deduced); yet when he by this parity the other colors are leveled down calls it Òalmost literalÓ he suggests precisely the as it were, to become identified with the raw direction these painters marked out for MarioniÕs cotton surface as much as the bareness is. (97) further development of what he learned from There is clearly a relation between the way them. ÒI would like to do for color what Pollock Greenberg here reads color and the idea of the did for line,Ó Marioni remarks in an interview; ÒI reduction to flatness, and there needs to be; the would like to free color from boundaryÓ idea of flatness is not simply expendable. But (Museum Abteiberg Catalog 25).
8 0 staten
De Duve passes lightly over this praise of Still, formulation, that the formal logic of modernism Rothko, and Newman, taking it as somehow he had done more than anyone else to define had restoring GreenbergÕs confidence in the thesis of not all of a sudden shifted course with the flatness and thus as leading up to the remark achievements in color and openness of Still, about a bare canvas; Fried more acutely notes Rothko, and Newman; these painters continued that GreenbergÕs remarks on color are ironically to follow out the consequences of the turn in the at odds with the remark about the bare canvas, modern period away from the illusionistic space but argues that Òthe reductionist logic of of representation. Thus, necessarily, they contin- GreenbergÕs theory of modernism meant that ued to work in a crucial, even an Òessential,Ó color or indeed ÔopennessÕ in recent painting sense within a Òlogic of flatnessÓ Ð the logic of could not assume the constitutive or essentialist the reduction of representation according to significance of flatness and the delimitation of which the form of painting is reconceived in what flatness ÉÓ (39). And it is true that Greenberg Ryman calls a realist way. This in fact was how now suggests the old logic has expended its impe- Greenberg himself initially developed his thesis tus as Still, Rothko, and Newman have opened a about flatness; what was fundamentally at issue Òsecond phaseÓ in the Òself-criticismÓ of in this thesis was the rejection of representation, modernism. In this new phase, the delimitation figuration, illusionism, Òthe flat pictureÕs denial of flatness is replaced as the central question by of efforts to Ôhole throughÕ it for realistic perspec- that of Òthe ultimate source of quality in artÓ tival space,Ó as Greenberg termed it in 1940 (vol. (Greenberg 132) Ð a source that Greenberg iden- 1, 34). Clearly, this denial must remain at the tifies as Òconception,Ó in the quite traditional center of any reflection on the modernist prob- sense of Òinspiration.Ó But this proclamation of a lematic; the work of Still, Rothko, and Newman new phase does not erase from the record the cannot be understood without it. But because he previous remark in which he marks out color and came to isolate flatness pure and simple as the openness as the exclusive formal pathway to the essence of painting-logic, GreenbergÕs recoil from future of painting Ð precisely the role he had flatness seemed to leave him no recourse but to formerly assigned to the problematic of flatness conclude that his problematic, and that of (of which, properly conceived, the questions of modernism, had shifted in a fundamentally new color and openness are aspects Ð as I will argue direction. below). If we were to choose one term to replace Òflat- The statement about a new phase confusedly nessÓ as the best single index of the modernist implies both that the old formalist logic is no reduction, at least within GreenbergÕs work, it longer relevant as painting turns from questions should probably be Òpainterliness.Ó Painterliness of form to questions of aesthetic quality Ð an is a much richer concept than flatness, more implication contradicted by the declaration adequately suggesting the complexity of concerning color and openness; and that the GreenbergÕs insights into painting, as well as question of quality in painting was not formerly pointing toward the primacy of paint stressed by a problem for modernism as it pursued its quest the radical painters. It is in fact a concept to for flatness Ð an implication that is contradicted which Greenberg himself accords centrality (as is by GreenbergÕs own earlier critical practice, in indicated, for instance, by his thinking which he insisted on the distinction between ÒPainterly AbstractionÓ was a better name than formal means and aesthetic quality. In 1959, for ÒAbstract ExpressionismÓ for the phenomenon instance, in ÒThe Case for Abstract ArtÓ in question). Painterly qualities are those that Greenberg had written that ÒAbstract painting pull the viewerÕs attention away from what the may be a purer, more quintessential form of painting represents toward the physical fact of pictorial art than the representational kind, but paint-applied-to-a-surface, of paint applied on top this does not of itself confer quality upon an of paint, of density and flow and so forth, and the abstract pictureÓ (82).10 problematic of painterliness therefore calls up as It is clear, despite GreenbergÕs muddled interdependent, intertwined questions the denial
8 1 radical painting of figuration, the physical and perceptual quali- could easily have called the telos of the painting- ties of painted color, and the flatness of the non- object or object-that-is-a-painting, which irre- illusionistic painted surface. ducibly involves being painted.11 Unlike, say, a wall that one paints, the painting-support is the painting is the body of color created purely in view of this function. (Greenberg ignored this fact and thus curiously Now, however, as we move away from represen- gave way to literal ÒliteralismÓ when he started to tation toward the full materiality of painting, we think of the flatness of the support in abstraction run up against the other limit of this logic: the from the purpose for which painting-supports are limit of objecthood on which Fried has so richly made.) The function of the whole painting, in meditated, but which Greenberg already detected. turn, is to be perceived as a painting, to give A painting cannot be a literal object, not even a human beings the perceptual experience that is literal painted object. The minimalists were very the experience of looking-at-a-painting, where the insistent on the difference between objects and painting, and not the illusion of space or the paintings, and their acute investigation of the figure of something in the world, is indeed what nature of literal objects is essential to the project is looked at Ð and where, of course, this entire of radical painting, a blinking red light that warns complex of function, artifact, and experience is the painter how far he can go in this direction and constituted ÒconventionallyÓ by a given society still be making a painting. How can we tell an with a given history. The functions of the physi- object that is a painting from a painted object? cal support and its qualities, including flatness, Only by becoming attuned to the painting-logic are definable only with reference to the function that produces the specific type of object that, of the full perceptual unity that is defined by this within a certain history as construed by a certain history, or by a certain appropriation of it, as the interpretation of that history, has become as finished painting; and the form or essence of the literal in its objecthood as it can be and still be a finished painting is the Òcolor-imageÓ that it painting Ð that has, in fact, become most fully a constitutes. In the final analysis, the ÒobjectnessÓ painting, and nothing but a painting, by the path of the painting is color (ibid.); all the physical of its own particular brand of Òliteralness.Ó parts of which the painting is made are brought ÒThe radical painter creates an object whose into their unity of aesthetic form by their subor- content is dependent on the intrinsic logic of its dination to the color. This does not mean that own material form,Ó claim Marioni and Umberg they are effaced, as was the tendency in represen- (Outside the Cartouche 22). This logic has to be tational painting. On the contrary, color is a understood in terms of what they call the function dimension of materiality and the radical painter is of this object (23). ÒPaintings are not found not trying to detach it from materiality. ÒAristotle objectsÓ; they are ÒmanmadeÓ and hence must be defines color as the Ôlimit of the translucent in a understood in terms of the purpose or function determinately bounded body.Õ This is a superb that motivates their making (19). Of course definition for the painter. It locates color within a paintings can be made for a variety of purposes, material (even though it is, in AristotleÕs concept, including the purpose of representation. But the outermost part of a thing) and it implies the representation would be a purpose external to the limitation of its form as materialÓ (24). The color Òlogic of the material formÓ of the painting. ÒThe of a painting, if it gives the rule to the physical material itself has perceptual content that is constituents, is itself bound to or determined by intrinsic to its functionÓ (24); the support, for their materiality (first of all, that of the paint) as instance, Òis an object whose specific purpose is this materiality has historically evolved in relation to-be-paintedÓ (ibid.). According to this func- to the evolving function of painting. But the size tional definition, then, flatness could not, logi- and shape and texture and absorptiveness of the cally, be the essence of the painting, because support, the relation to the wall, and so forth, everything about the painting has to be under- must co-operate in an overall perception, the deci- stood in relation to what Marioni and Umberg sive or ruling factor of which is color. Color is the
8 2 staten essence of the painting in much the way that for which to meditate on materiality and objecthood Aristotle the soul is the essence or form of the and which through this meditation participates in body. Even though the form is in perception bringing forth new work. The theorist might, detached from the material, substance or ousia is correspondingly, avail himself of the concept in a embodied form; and the radical painting is ousia non-metaphysical, ordinary-language way, as a as embodied color. historically contingent notion, in something like How can color be a form? A form is by defin- the way Fried already proposed in ÒArt and ition bounded or what gives boundary; Aristotle Objecthood.Ó Nevertheless, if GreenbergÕs own himself in the Poetics used the drawn line as a dogmatic reduction is too ÒessentialistÓ to be paradigm of form, but the drawn line is one of useful, FriedÕs version of a contingent essence of the remnants of representation that the radical modernism is a little too flexible to capture what painter eschews in his search for Òopenness.Ó But is distinctive about Radical Painting. color becomes, or can become, a form when it Greenberg himself suggested that the idea of finds the absolutely specific, bounded body that purity could be Òmerely an illusion,Ó but a it reciprocally determines and is determined by. ÒusefulÓ one, that had led to good new develop- There is no notional answer to the question of ments among the artists under its spell. The idea how color can function as form, only the histori- of a Òmere illusionÓ functioning in this way, cal fact that certain painters have worked out an however, is a hangover from nineteenth-century aesthetic and a painting-practice that treats it as positivism and is inadequate to describe the func- such, and the proof is in the experience of their tional role, within the micrology of radical paint- work (or not). ing practice, of the idea of reducing painting to its fundamentals. It is necessary to take the idea art vs. craft of an essence of painting seriously in order to understand Radical Painting from within, and If Radical Painting is what gives importance to even really to see it, to see it understandingly in yet another reconsideration, at this late date, of its profound relation, not along one axis but in the logic of modernism, what gives importance to terms of a myriad of threads, to a tradition out of radical painting itself is the act of aesthetic judg- which this work grows, and which is retrospec- ment that says Òthis is goodÓ to the work of tively reconstituted once again as a tradition, Ryman or Marioni or Umberg. And this aesthetic with a somewhat altered meaning, in view of this judgment itself, made in the strong form that new development. both Greenberg and Fried emphasize, in which it Such conviction of aesthetic quality as may be expresses not just a feeling of pleasure but a judg- derived from a radical painting, because specific ment of aesthetic quality, is indissociable from to the historical-conceptual lineage of the type of knowledge of modernism as a tradition of specific artwork in question, is not of the transcendentally self-criticism. This tradition has not primarily compulsory sort implied by De DuveÕs version of been a matter of conceptual formulations and Kantian aesthetic judgment. The version of deductions concerning ÒconventionsÓ and Òthe ÒspecificityÓ that I am arguing here implies that state of the medium,Ó but an education for the one can, and indeed ought to, refrain from the eye, yet an education that has of course essen- judgment Òthis is artÓ while making the judgment tially involved the brain and language as well as Òthis is a good painting.Ó This is not to deny that the hand and the brush, and increasingly so as the generic concept of art is meaningful; only to the tradition has become more articulately self- say that the large questions of art that De Duve aware Ð a self-awareness that has increasingly raises obfuscate the issue of the logic of reduction become, among the practitioners of the art, an in the history of modern painting Ð at least along explicit logic of purism and reduction to the the line that leads to Radical Painting. If one Òessence.Ó Whatever it might be for the theorist, knows the most resourceful form of the thesis the concept of essence is for the painter not a about reduction to the essence, and if one has dogmatic doctrinal simplification but a tool with spent enough time looking at the most serious
8 3 radical painting work that has been produced either on the basis doubt that the ultimate and genuine significance of this thesis or in a way that supports it, then one of the debates over essentialism are rooted in the can in principle have an aesthetic experience that problems of democratization that De Duve stands up to the experience one has had of the addresses. aesthetic objects that have formed oneÕs sense of However, the great democratizing movement optimal aesthetic experience; but it is only as a that De Duve sees as the legacy of Duchamp Ð quite specific experience that one can have it. everyone an artist, the artwork as anything what- Contrary to De Duve, it is not only not necessary ever Ð is achieved at the cost of an elision of the to judge Òthis is artÓ before one can judge Òthis is physical labor involved in making a work of art, a painting, and a good oneÓ; it is necessary not to and which is the ultimate source of the workÕs do so (though one might go on to the generic specificity. Duchamp did not make his urinal, judgment afterwards, recognizing that one is now but someone or a group of someones did Ð anony- switching language-games in so doing). mous workmen in a urinal factory. I am not so As in any other question of aesthetic experi- worried about the possibility that artworks could ence, the judgment of quality in front of a radi- be automatically created by deduction from a cal painting is not a matter of deduction and it is logic (a rather specialized and even artificial not compulsory. But Radical Painting has the problem, in my view) as I am by the fact that the earmarks of a well-grounded and valid aesthetic work of their making could then be assigned to movement, and forces a reconsideration of ques- someone else, or, in the case of the readymades, tions that had seemed to be closed when it looked has already been done by someone else. One of as though the modernist logic had hit a dead end. the things that strikes me most about RymanÕs, What all this betokens regarding the larger ques- MarioniÕs, and UmbergÕs art is that, for all its tions of the Òculture warsÓ is a further question conceptual sophistication, it has a strong affinity that I will touch on below; for now what I want with craft Ð an affinity that, incidentally, goes to stress is that, if we are going to use modernism back to the roots of modernist art-theory in as an example of anything on the way to a larger Baudelaire, that great early debunker of the argument, we should address it in its fullness as genius-and-inspiration theory of aesthetics and a historically evolving phenomenon, along with pioneer of the notion that the specific province of the most resourceful statement of its rationale or poetry is language as a material medium.12 ÒtheoryÓ; and this involves criticizing and reject- Marioni and Umberg, in a striking move, ing GreenbergÕs own dogmatic theses and De compared the purpose and usability of their DuveÕs interpretation of them. paintings to that of an ordinary chair (Outside Nevertheless, I want to pay tribute to the the Cartouche 23Ð24); and Marioni goes so far as scope and seriousness of Kant after Duchamp, to entirely abjure the honorific art for his work, particularly because of the framework of sociopo- defining his work strictly and solely as painting. litical reflection that gives point to De DuveÕs We are so inured to thinking of painting as art ÒgenealogicalÓ reconsideration of modernist that MarioniÕs resistance to this assimilation painting. My remarks here have focused on might seem incomprehensible or even senseless. narrowly aesthetic issues, and I recognize that If painting isnÕt art, what is it? And if it isnÕt art, these issues may appear trivial compared to why should it have any claim on our attention? the question of the cultural and political mission MarioniÕs stubborn adherence to the speci- of the artist, in the context of the great upheavals ficity of the practice of painting indicates an of the twentieth century, which De Duve tries ethicopolitical resonance of the question of the to understand. I am especially troubled by the medium, of its irreducibly material nature, and problem of the esoteric nature of the of the craftsmanÕs attunement to that materiality, modernistÐformalist aesthetic I have defended which modernity, first in the aftermath of KantÕs here, its seemingly elitist adherence to a refine- and RomanticismÕs infatuation with Ògenius,Ó ment of aesthetic taste that can perhaps only ever later under the spell of the poststructuralist be the possession of a privileged few. I have no Aufhebung of materiality into language, has had
8 4 staten trouble keeping consistently in view Ð in spite of The paradox is neither illusory nor necessary. the modernist intervention. The continuing The truth is that more than one thread of ÒlogicÓ significance of the thesis of specificity is for me traverses the history of modernism, and where we grounded in the indissociability it suggests of the end up depends on which thread we take up. De labor of the artist from the specific nature of his Duve has articulated for us with great precision medium in its complex, socially conditioned the decisive line that is crossed with Duchamp materiality Ð which is the same as the indissocia- and conceptualism, when, following one develop- bility of art from its craft-aspect. The generic ment of the logic of specificity, the bond between judgment Òthis is artÓ is no doubt necessary in artistic practice and the specificity of the medium the language-game that has developed around art is broken and the concept of art emerges in its that intentionally wanders away from the own generic rather than specific purity. Once this constraints of established, specific art-forms. As bond is broken, everything about art begins to I have tried to show in this essay, however, this dissolve in the universal medium of discursivity, development does not mean that some generic and this marks the final break between the judgment of value has now superseded, wholly profession of the artist and the guild tradition in and in all contexts, the modernist logic of speci- which this profession had continued to be, ficity. Moreover, De DuveÕs arguments that a however distantly, rooted. What I have tried to picture must be judged to be art before it can be show in this essay is that the terms in which judged to be a picture, and that the judgment Radical Painting is conceived are terms that lead Òthis is beautifulÓ is identical with the judgment us ineluctably away from the universal solvent of Òthis is art,Ó strike me as no friendlier to a discursivity and back toward the realm of mater- democratization of art and the creative process ial practices. I have been concerned to show that than they are to the vacuous cult of art-fetishism there is nothing naive about this turn; that it of which we already see signs in KantÕs almost incorporates as an essential part of its conception helpless awe before the inexplicability of genius, and of its practice a reflection on the conven- and of which the only slightly more foolish tional nature of the materiality of the medium Ð descendant is the contemporary worship of the that this, too, is a rigorous unfolding of the logic art-superstar.13 of specificity.14 In this essay I can only indicate the outlines I am more inclined to the latter than the of the full theorization that Radical Painting former development for two interrelated reasons. invites, and to which the current notion of the First (a point I have stressed), because the subla- conventionality of art practices is so inadequate. tionist narrative empties most or all of the mate- The convergence once more at this late date in riality out of the notion of the medium, in favor history of the notions of art and craft requires a of the notion of convention. Radical Painting, by rethinking of the entire history of the concept of contrast, in its reflection on the materiality of the art as this history has been configured by the medium, does not in any way slight the conven- evolutionary narrative of its emergence Ð more tional element in this materiality. Second, than once; in ancient Greece and again in the late because the sublationist dematerialization of the Middle Ages Ð in its purity from a more gener- medium opens out an unlimited field of critical alized notion of making. Modernism is discursivity about art in which the critic or theo- commonly Ð and rightly Ð understood as the rist is authorized to say practically anything since final step in the emergence of the pure concept the entire cultural field can now be framed as of art, and GreenbergÕs ideas about the speci- aesthetic Ð and art itself in this postmodern ficity of the individual arts are an important regime, as Rosalind Krauss writes, Òmimics just chapter in the history of this emergence. Hence this leeching of the aesthetic out into the social the notion that Radical Painting is a continua- field in general.Ó15 Not everyone will consider tion of the logic of modernism, yet an overcom- this a demerit; and I myself do not believe in any ing of the distinction between art and craft, juridical prohibition on the criticÕs discourse might seem paradoxical. becoming autotelic, nor am I immune to the
8 5 radical painting pleasures of postmodern cultural aesthetics. the interaction between sociality and the physical Nevertheless, there is something specific to the world that leaves a perduring trace that then acts painterÕs, sculptorÕs, musicianÕs É practice that as a partial determinant on the purposeful action is also autotelic, or which might be so conceived, of human beings: precisely the fundamental and as so conceived made the basis of that prac- structure that underlies those later features of tice, and to which justice can be done only by a social activity, more complexly sedimented with critical discourse that does not auto-authorize the history of a culture, that are properly under- itself but binds itself as tightly as possible to that stood as conventions. Then there begins the practice in the fullness of its conventional mate- making of tools, which are once again initially the riality. residue of repeated acts of fraying, say to make a Here I can only sketch the outlines of the full, point or an edge, and the material of which the historically articulated account of human praxis tool is made Ð hard or frangible, offering a firm as a whole that would constitute a more adequate grasp or slippery, etc. Ð together with the shape account of artistic convention as grounded in with which it has now been inscribed, is hence- what I have been calling conventional material- forth a fatality or system of limits that conditions ity.16 Such an account would take as its funda- the further development of the sociality that has mental reference points, on the one hand, brought it into being as just this tool (and even, AristotleÕs analysis of the teleology of human as some theorists have argued, the further devel- practices and, on the other hand, MarxÕs analysis opment of the human brain itself). The methods of human productive activity, that is human by which the tool is made are themselves the labor as the foundational fact of social existence. social inscription of historically accumulated A fully articulated theory of conventional individual acts in their effective interaction with materiality would begin with the beginnings of the material of the tool, and might have their own human culture in order to excavate the residue of further development in interaction with new fatality, the unpredictable system of limits, that materials and in combination with methods arises at the point of intersection of multiple acts derived from other contexts. Now labor, craft, of individual exertion that are carried on within and art might begin to be differentiated; but they a social context and leave their residue on the are part of a matrix that never entirely comes physical world, long before the emergence of undone Ð or, rather, that ought never be allowed even the most rudimentary arts and crafts, and to come entirely undone. even before the advent of language. The most What is brought to light in such an account, primordial inscriptions on the world of these beyond or beneath the question of conventions, is residues are the rubbing clear of the ground the teleology of social practice that conditions all where a group of humans or proto-humans sits to materiality within culture, and which ordains that rest or lies down to sleep, of pathways where one praxis must always be grounded in its specificity. walks after the other, of trees stripped bare of It seems to me that an essential beginning toward fruit around these inscribed areas so that the the thinking-through of this problematic Ð and at people are constrained to move along, fraying precisely the conjunction between Aristotle and new paths and making new clearings. Here is the Marx Ð was made by Georg Luk‡cs in his final beginning of history as the simple deposit of work, The Ontology of Social Being. ÒThrough accumulated acts within the context of sociality, labour, a teleological positing is realized within and the landscape is the incipiently socialized material being, as the rise of a new objectivity. materiality that serves as the support of this The first consequence of this is that labour inscription. Later on in history, as Marx observes becomes the model for any in The German Ideology, there will no longer be social practice, for in such social any nature left; it will all have been absorbed into practice Ð no matter how rami- the network of cultural inscription; in this earlier fied its mediations Ð teleological period there is as yet nothing that can be called positings are always realized, and a convention, and nevertheless there is already ultimately realized materially.Ó17
8 6 staten notes at the root” of all the others (175). Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J.H. Bernard (New York: 1 The movement was formally baptized in the Hafner, 1951). public eye by a special issue of Kunstforum International (Mar.–Apr. 1987), edited by Amione 9 Behind this belief of Greenberg’s, once again we Haase, that focused on “Radikale Malerei.” Among might discern Kant, for whom “express rules” the pieces included in this issue are my “Joseph cannot be the basis on which an art is transmitted. Marioni: Malerei Jenseits Narrativität” and articles For Kant, there is no middle term between the on Umberg and other German radical painters pure originating power, granted by nature, of the who have continued to figure significantly: Ullrich genius, on the one hand, and the explicit rules that Wellman, Ingo Meller, and Peter Tollens. the schools derive from the genius’s original works of art in order to train subordinate, unorig- 2 See the essay on Umberg by Hannelore inal talents to trudge in his footsteps. An art devel- Kersting, “Painting as Articulated Paint,” in the ops historically by the immediate communication catalogue to the exhibition Gunter Umberg, of the inspiring force of nature from one genius to Städelsches Kunstinstitut Frankfurt, 1985. another, without the mediation of “rules.” Kant 3 Thierry De Duve, Kant after Duchamp thinks of the tekhne of an art only in this sense of (Cambridge: MIT P, 1996). All citations of De “express rules”; he has no concept of the medium Duve refer to this volume. in the modern or modernist sense – not as a system of explicit rules but as an ensemble of tech- 4 All citations of Greenberg are to Clement niques in dialectical interaction with the material- Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, vol. 4, ity of a specific material (words, tones, colors, Modernism with a Vengeance (Chicago: U of stone, etc.). Third Critique, sects. 45–50. Chicago P, 1993). 5 Painting and picture are normally synonymous in 10 Despite the impression De Duve creates of a art-critical talk, and I won’t object to this usage. sudden choice in favor of quality in 1962, this However, the idea that there can be an unpainted distinction had been consistently maintained by picture seems to me to dissimulate an absurdity Greenberg. The remark from 1959 is worth quot- that is patent in the phrase “unpainted painting.” ing in full: “I still know of nothing in abstract paint- This absurdity that Greenberg created is exploited ing, aside perhaps from some of the near-abstract at great length by De Duve, who buys into it Cubist works that Picasso, Braque, and Leger because it serves his purposes admirably. executed between 1910 and 1914, which matches the highest achievements of the old masters. 6 Stedelijk Museum Catalog, 1975; quoted by Abstract painting may be a purer, more quintes- Sauer in Christel Sauer and Urs Rausmüller (eds.), sential form of pictorial art than the representa- Robert Ryman, catalog for Ryman exhibition in the tional kind, but this does not of itself confer quality Espace d’Art Contemporain, 1991, 31. on an abstract picture. The ratio of bad abstract painting to good is actually much higher than the 7 Joseph Marioni and Günther Umberg, Outside the ratio of bad to good representational painting.” Cartouche: Zur Frage des Betrachters in der Radikalen “The Case for Abstract Art” 82. And in “After Malerei. English and German; German trans. Abstract Expressionism” itself, Greenberg refers Nikolaus Hoffmann and Rolf Taschen (Munich: to his 1948 refusal of the “dogmatism that held Neue Kunst, 1986). Umberg’s work in the 1990s that one species of art must in a given period be took new directions; in this essay I refer only to better than any other species,” and then asserts the period of his collaboration with Marioni. that Pollock’s and Gorky’s pictures stayed 8 Aristotle remarks in the Poetics, chapter 10, that “further behind their frames than Mondrian’s or in a painting “the most beautiful pigments smeared Picasso’s post-1913 pictures did,” but that going on at random will not give as much pleasure as a “backwards in terms of the evolution of style” was black-and-white outline picture.” Aristotle, Poetics, at that time “almost the only way to go forward in trans. Gerald Else (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P) terms of major quality” (124). The simple state- 28. And Kant comments in the Third Critique that ment in 1964 that “form as such is a neutral “delineation is the essential thing” in all the “forma- element as far as quality is concerned” (180) thus tive arts” (61), and painting is the foremost of reaffirms Greenberg’s consistent view. Cf. Fried, these arts because “as the art of delineation it lies who agrees that Greenberg is “right to say that he
8 7 radical painting never presented flatness and the inclosing of flat- ness as criteria of quality” (66). 11 The conclusion that a painting must be painted, obvious from the ordinary person’s standpoint, and which I am thus slightly embarrassed to draw, has to be argued in the face of De Duve’s argu- ment, which keeps alive Greenberg’s suggestion that a painting (or “picture”) need not be painted (see n. 5 above). 12 See Graham Chester, Baudelaire and the Poetics of Craft (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988). 13 I say “almost” helpless because Kant does choose the primacy of rules over mere undisci- plined genius. 14 Yet another, deconstruction-based, develop- ment of the logic of specificity is that by Rosalind Krauss, who in her reading of Marcel Broodthaers argues that “the specificity of mediums, even modernist ones, must be understood as differen- tial, self-differing, and thus as a layering of conven- tions never simply collapsed into the physicality of their support.” “A Voyage on the North Sea”: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition (New York: Thames, 1999) 53. Although the artist she discusses, and the theory she elaborates, are very distant from Radical Painting, her essay, like mine, rejects the vulgar idea of the medium as “a layer- ing of conventions … simply collapsed into the physicality of their support.” 15 “A Voyage on the North Sea” 56. 16 The earliest stimulus to the interpretation of Radical Painting, and the following reflections on praxis, that I present here was a fascinating essay by Lothar Romain on Analytical Painting, a movement which I interpret as a precursor of Radical Painting. See Lothar Romain, “The Artistic Truth of Things that Exist: Reflections Pertaining to (the Theory of) Analytical Painting,” trans. Antony de Nardini and Paul Angus in A Proposito della Pittura/Bettrefende Het Schilderen/Concerning Painting, catalogue Museum Van Bommel–Van Dam Venlo/Stedelijk Museum Schiedam/Hedenaagse Kunst Utrecht 1975–76, 27–32. Henry Staten 17 Georg Lukács, The Ontology of Social Being: Department of English Labour (London: Merlin, 1980) 3. This volume is a University of Washington translation of the first chapter of Part Two of the Box 35436 larger work. Seattle, WA 98195 USA E-mail: [email protected] He jotted down this thought, if it can be called that, on a loose sheet of paper, hoping to use it later, perhaps in some pondered statement about the mystery of writing which will probably culminate, fol- lowing the definitive lessons of the poet, in the precise and sober declaration that the mystery of writ- ing lies in the absence of any mystery whatsoever, which if accepted, might lead us to the conclusion that if there is no mystery about writing, neither can there be any mystery about the writer.
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/02/010089-01 © 2002 John X. Berger
8 9