I found “Modernisms” by James Elkins to be very useful in understanding certain theorists and critics such as Michael Fried, T.J. Clarke, and Greenberg. I was especially surprised and interested to read about why and how Greenberg has been misunderstood. But, I can’t say that I felt sorry for Greenberg in any way. I don’t agree that sticking to strict standards in art is something that we should ever be doing. However, I do agree that everyone is entitled to his or her own ideology surrounding art, whatever that may be.
Also quite useful was the way that Elkins broke down the different ways that modernism can be looked at. I tend to agree with all of them to some degree or another. But, I think I especially agree that it began at the beginning of the 18th century. However, I don’t believe that anyone can argue that it is because of any one cause. Synchronicity of events seems to make the most sense. One thing does not necessarily cause another. There is always some kind of discourse going on whether it is unconscious or not.
TJ Clarke on the other hand, I had a difficult time with. However, I loved that he related Abstract Expressionism and its entire era to vulgarity. I certainly agree with that to a certain degree. I think that there are two statements that sum up what Clarke was trying to say (other than vulgar, vulgar, vulgar) and they are:
“Abstract Expressionist painting is best when it is most vulgar, because it is then that it grasps most fully the conditions of representations – the technical and social conditions – of its historical moment.” AND “But sometimes it falls to a class to offer to suffer the absurdities of individualism in pure form – unbreathably pure, almost, a last gasp of oxygen as the plane goes down. That was the case, I think, with American painting after 1945.” Both of these statements are about Abstract Expressionism as an expression of a particular society’s state of being during that period of time, and I think that he was getting at the importance of looking at that rather than at the formal. As he says in the beginning of the essay, he thinks that the kind of questions that are worth asking are those about the context and implications of the art work rather than questions about their “sensory reality” or where the eye is led as a result of line, color, or plane.