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The American, Clement Greenberg, was arguably the foremost art critic of his generation. With his name forever linked to Modernism and the rise of the Abstract Expressionists he has for many years been out of favour but seems to be enjoying something of a revival. Hence this article which seeks to investigate the merit of one of his most influential ideas, the notion that what is valuable in an art is the property that is unique about its medium. A consequence of this idea, for Greenberg, is that “flatness” is the fundamental attribute of painting.
According to Greenberg, Modernism was the outcome of a process that began with the Enlightenment. It involved Western civilisation self-critically questioning its own foundations to provide a more rational justification for its many social activities, including art. The need was for art to show that the experience it provided was, to quote, “valuable in its own right and not to be obtained from any other kind of activity”.
How was this to be accomplished? Greenberg had the answer, the arts would use “the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself”. Thus it became obvious “that the unique and proper area of competence of each art coincided with all that was unique to the nature of its medium”. There was therefore a need “to eliminate from the effects of each art any and every effect that might conceivably be borrowed from or by the medium of any other art”. Let us follow this argument using the example of painting, as did Greenberg.
For painting or pictorial art, Greenberg seems to use the two terms interchangeably, “flatness alone was unique and exclusive”, “the only condition painting shared with no other art”. This seemed to make sense at a time when painting was dispensing with representation, when abstraction seemed the only way forward. Now however there seems reason to doubt this conclusion.
For a start why, if the intention is to justify the value of art, is the emphasis seemingly on distinguishing one art from another. Surely the first priority must be to secure art’s existence, to discover the quality or property that is unique to art alone.
Without knowing this how can it be judged whether art has any inherent value? Greenberg makes no mention of this yet one of the perennial problems with art has been the attempt to define it. “What is art” is a question that still needs answering even though many have tried. This failing undermines the whole of Greenberg’s reasoning.
If painting is an art form and if its inherent characteristic is flatness then it seems logical to ask that this property be shared with nothing else, whether it be art or not. Only then can it be unique to painting. Yet it takes only a cursory glance at the world to see that flatness is a far from unique property. Flatness is everywhere; walls, floors, ceilings, all exhibit this property. If flatness is inherently valuable to you then all you need to do is look at the nearest wall. No need to look at art at all.
Should you object, saying that art cannot possibly be compared with anything that is not art, there still remains a problem. If flatness is unique to painting then what about those other arts that display the property. Drawing, printing, photography, all use the flatness of paper for their support. Are they not arts? If they can share this property of flatness then painting must discard it. Greenberg says so. Remember, if a property can be borrowed by another art it must be foresworn.
Painting would seem to have no property it can call its own. If so, if Greenberg is correct in his analysis, the only conclusion to draw is that painting does not exist. Logically therefore, it follows that if painting doesn’t exist then neither does any other art. The same reasoning that negates painting’s existence will do the same for all the other arts. Think of anything and it will be found that whatever characteristic it processes it will be shared with something else in the world. Thus, if the individual arts cannot exist, art cannot exist. Instead of justifying the existence of art Greenberg has eliminated not only painting but art itself from existence.
All quotations from Art and Literature no. 4, spring 1965, pp. 193-201. Reprinted in Modern Art and Modernism A Critical Anthology (Harper and Row 1982), pp. 5-10.
