leonardo reviews editor-in-chief Michael Punt associate editors Hannah Drayson, Dene Grigar, Jane Hutchinson A full selection of reviews is published monthly on the Leonardo website: <leonardoreviews.mit.edu>. EXHIBITIONS ambivalent “moral autonomy” with work of artists such as Jasper Johns, respect to historical relations with Robert Rauschenberg and Andy LEON GOLUB POWERPLAY: both capitalism and modern (mass) Warhol—did much to undermine THE POLITICAL PORTRAITS society. A self-critique of the arts as a the dominance of formalist theory. curated by Jon Bird. National Portrait form of essentialism frequently took Others have joined critics such as Gallery, London, U.K., 18 March–25 the form of an opposition between Rosalind Krauss and Carol Duncan, September 2016. Exhibit website: representation and abstraction. Inter- who attacked modernism’s myths of <www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/2016/ woven into the canonical narrative originality and “centeredness” and its leon-golub-powerplay-the-political was a belief in the expressive and position of “privileged” and gendered -portraits.php>. existential capacity of art to operate as hegemony in dismantling Greenberg’s Reviewed by Giovanna Costantini. a method of individuation along with paradigm. Email: <costantini.giovanna.l@ a set of other features. These include There are reasons to regard the gmail.com>. the pursuit of effects of detachment “historic moment” as relevant in and depersonalization, mechaniza- reconstructing a definition of mod- doi:10.1162/LEON_r_01363 tion and technology; an emphasis on ernism and to confront the role of Suppose someone comes along surface reflexivity; a tendency toward history as the canyon (versus the who does not know “bridge,” and transcendentalism; and attention to canon) of art’s operative field. In there is no bridge to which I could the internal ordering and relationship this field, modernism’s aestheti- point and utter the word. I would of parts in tension with, in paint- cism should be tempered, indeed then draw an image of the scheme ing, undifferentiated composition. of a bridge which of course is It is from such values that one (to already a particular bridge, just many minds) dominant exclusionary Reviews Panel: Nameera Ahmed, Fred to remind him of some schema monolith of modernism came to be Andersson, Jan Baetens, John F. Barber, Roy Behrens, K. Blassnigg, Catalin Brylla, Annick known to him such as “transition” erected (one that paralleled American postwar hegemony of the 1950s and Bureaud, Chris Cobb, Ornella Corazza, from one side of the river to the Giovanna Costantini, Anna B. Creagh, Edith other [1]. 1960s), a superstructure considered Doove, Hannah Drayson, Phil Dyke, Amanda by many to be at odds with the Egbe, Anthony Enns, Jennifer Ferng, Enzo Despite the many psychological and movement’s resistance to totalitar- Ferrara, George Gessert, Allan Graubard, semiotic re-codings of American ian extension. Dene Grigar, Rob Harle, Craig Harris, Harriet modernism, it continues to bear Most critics recognize that it was Hawkins, Paul Hertz, Craig J. Hilton, Jung A. Huh, Jane Hutchinson, Amy Ione, Boris imprints of Clement Greenberg’s during the 1960s that the central Jardine, Richard Kade, Valérie Lamontagne, “canon” of 1939–1940 that derived tenets of American modernism began Mike Leggett, Will Luers, Roger Malina, from the 19th-century European to erode, at the height of Greenberg’s Jacques Mandelbrojt, Florence Martellini, tradition of l’art pour l’art allied to and Michael Fried’s self-conscious Elizabeth McCardell, Eduardo Miranda, a reactionary academic and social Robert A. Mitchell, Michael Mosher, Sana defense of abstraction. Greenberg Murrani, Frieder Nake, Maureen A. Nappi, program. Greenberg identified three and Fried’s formalist emphasis on Martha Patricia Nino, Claudy Opdenkamp, principal features of American mod- unitary integration and impersonal Jack Ox, Jussi Parikka, Ellen Pearlman, Ana ernism that in certain ways amalgam- flatness was marginalized by persis- Peraica, Stephen Petersen, Michael Punt, ated the tendencies that had evolved tent figuration and postwar European Kathleen Quillian, Hannah Rogers, Lara in Europe from Édouard Manet to Schrijver, Aparna Sharma, George K. Shortess, expressionism; by kitsch and realism’s Brian Reffin Smith, Yvonne Spielmann, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Wassily “recomplication” of the pictorial field; Eugenia Stamboliev, Elizabeth Straughan, Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich. and by new propositions bound to Malgorzata Sugiera, Charrisa N. Terranova, These were: aesthetic innovation and minimalism, process and anti-form. Eugene Thacker, Yvan Tina, Flutur Troshani, originality within a given cultural John Cage’s challenge to authorship, Rene van Peer, Stefaan Van Ryssen, Ian and formalist grammar; tendencies Verstegen, John Vines, Robert A. Vonlanthen, materiality and internal structure— Claudia Westermann, Cecilia Wong, Martyn that reflect the process and societal seen also in Alison Knowles’s “Make Woodward, Jonathan Zilberg impact of modernization; and an a Salad” of 1962, as well as in the ©2017 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 50, No. 1, pp. 97–110, 2017 97 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 reconceived, less in terms of purifica- Alfaro Siqueiros to Max Beckmann, who interrogates modern art’s alle- tion and autonomy than in terms of Jacob Riis to Dorothea Lange. In this gorical impulse, asserts postmod- purgation and cultural reckoning. light, the positioning of modernism’s ernism’s distance from history and In the United States, in the aftermath claims of subjectivity and psychologi- an emptying of original meaning of the two world wars, the year 1968 cal introspection—to say nothing of attached to emblematic signs that is signaled a “historical moment,” an its grammatical stylizations—against indicative of an absence of artistic instant in which the product of his- postmodernism’s anti-aesthetic and intuition. Daniel Bell refers also to tory is universalized as the human its polemical, process-driven resis- “the eclipse of distance” that substi- condition. That year marked a frac- tance, ignores a shared thematic tutes impact and sensation for con- ture comparable to the outbreak of unity within the confines of the 20th templation and cultural judgment; a World War I in Europe (an event century. Such unity constitutes mod- concern with personality rather than whose reverberations of disillusion- ernism’s essential, reflective quality in moral character; and an emphasis on ment still resound throughout the the presence of history, a centenary the self over consensual standards modern world)—for 1968 was the history that is bound by pluralities of as signs of modernism’s exhaustion. year of the My Lai Massacre and critique. Jürgen Habermas insists on modern- the Tet Offensive in Vietnam; of the This distinction—between modern ism’s resistance to failed propositions assassinations of Martin Luther King, and postmodern—should be replaced of the past and advocates an aesthetic Jr., and Robert Kennedy; of student with an enlarged, assimilative view of modernity dedicated to “communica- riots and general strikes in France; of modernism that asserts both the his- tive rationality” as a societal impera- the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the torical as well as the dramatic char- tive. Frederic Jameson refers to the U.S.S.R.; and of the death of the artist acter of the art of the 20th century “bracketing” of history, the substitu- Marcel Duchamp. The year 1968 is over its scenic adaptations. I propose tion of simulacra for the original, often cited as the crucible of Ameri- that one interpretation of modernism the waning of subjectivity and emo- can modernism: It coincides with the be based on a model of Aristotelian tion. My position does not oppose onset of American disillusionment tragedy outlined in Aristotle’s Poet- concepts that inform postmodern owing to the loss of humane leader- ics as a performance aimed at the criticism; its divisive, variegated ship, a prolonged and ever-escalating pursuit of universal truth through the perspectives; and its deconstructive military conflict and the growing exercise of aesthetic judgment. Such complexities. Rather it seeks to iden- awareness that the United States was a model of tragedy, distinct from tify a more coherent art-historical involved in a war that could never be Nietzschean prototypes of Dionysian and cultural framework for modern- won. Just as Europe recoiled in the subjectivity and existential isola- ism, one that reasserts the unitary aftermath of Auschwitz, for many aes- tion, seeks determination of moral social bases of art as articulated by theticism became indefensible follow- purpose through actions that are of Meyer Schapiro [2]. These are foun- ing the carpet bombing and chemical a certain magnitude with respect to dations that engage aesthetically from defoliation of Vietnam. Lying as it the particulars of history, actions within a specific temporal history and does beyond the canon, Maya Lin’s advanced by an artist-protagonist as reflect T.J. Clark’s call for art that is Memorial of 1982 may present a fit- a corporeal member of a generational created in relation to wider currents ting closure to Greenbergian mod- and interdependent society. Herein, of society, especially historical cur- ernism, for it lies beyond the limits of the 20th century represents a scene of rents that have continued to erode its ruinous history where it mourns contest and bodily suffering, a site of the social fabric from which common the loss of once young and vigorous disfigured realism in which to effect experience and meaning is generated lives. It recalls Fried’s remark about anagnorisis—discovery—along with throughout the modern age. Frank Stella: “He wanted to paint like catharsis—a cleansing of the body or One of the bridges joining mod- Velasquez but he realized he could the spirit through purgation. This is ernism to postmodernism must be only paint stripes.” a site moreover in which to move the located in the historical particulars The line of demarcation dividing viewer from ignorance to knowledge of social realism.