Category Archives: Notes

Click to access C.%20Greenberg%252c%20Modernist%20Painting.pdf

-The essence of modernism lies in the methods of the discipline to self-criticise. To criticise from the inside spontaneously and subliminaly individually.

-Needs to demonstrate it is a valuable contribution to human experience. Each particular art had to exhibit its uniqueness.

-‘Modernism used art to call attention to art… the flat surface, the shape, the properties of pigment – were treated by the old masters as negative factors… Modernist painting has come to regard these same limitations as positive factors.’

-Modernism was defined by the flatness of the support. The old masters preserved the picture plane giving the illusion of three dimensional space. Modernists – ‘One is made aware of the flatness of their pictures before, instead of after, being made aware of what the flatness contains.’

-Modernist painting abandons the representation that 3D objects can inhabit. It has diverged itself from everything it might share with sculpture or other arts. Its uniqueness was flatness.

-Impressionists abandoned sculptural and Cubists created flatter paintings. Paint texture, value and colour contrast were tested/retested. Not necessary aesthetic qualities.

-Modernism has not broken with the past but devolved from.

‘Modernist art does not offer theoretical demonstrations.. it converts all theoretical possibilities into empirical ones, and in doing so tests, inadvertently, all theories about art for their relevance to the actual practice and experience of art.’