NOTES: Modern and Postmodern by Clement Greenberg.
http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/postmodernism.html
*Later essay written in 1979.
* “Criticism seeks to maintain standards in the face of their continual tendency to
determinate.”(Quote by Samuel Johnson).
- I believe this quote claims that the task of criticism creates standards that hold
down certain rules or methods in approaching the subject in focus. If for some reason
criticism was no longer practiced, then everything would sink into a tasteless soup that
causes the critic to read everything with a nihilistic attitude. Therefore critical standards
must become universal and totalizing to act as way in going about judging a particular
subject. In Greenberg’s case, once these standards are created and fixed for judging a
work of art, it can then determine what constitutes low, middle, and highbrow creations.
I
a. Postmodernism is only a clear definition in the field of architecture. Is this because
the postmodern shift in architecture was only based on stylistic and formal
properties?
b. Modern architecture is defined as “functional, geometric rigor and the eschewing of
decoration or ornament.”
II
a. It cannot be clearly defined in another field. It has been confusingly applied to
music but never or rarely in music, dance, or movies.
b. Only termed in painting and sculpture, but only used by critics and journalists- NOT
ARTISTS themselves.
III (De Chirico)
a. Po-mo in the arts could be referring to the return of a picturesque foreground, or
figurative and representational images.
b. There are ‘other less obvious’ and ‘more general reasons’ of Postmodernism talk,
however Greenberg does not state what.
c. No critic or journalist uses the term Postmodernism assertively or ‘freely’.
IV
a. The word ‘post’ is generally used in temporal chronological sense, however the
‘post’ in Postmodernism is used as the method of art making/viewing has improved,
evolved, superseded Modernism. He does not clarify if he is referring to a stylistic
or conceptual shift.
V
a. To determine something modern it boils down to the question of taste. Can this
determination only be a subjective conclusion? Shouldn’t defining something as
‘modern’ have an objective approach so the conclusion is not obscured by personal
or social biases?
VI
a. Greenberg believes that Modernism is a historically plausible term, a defined era. It
has a point of origin.
b. Modernism emerged in the middle of the 19th century in Frances. Baudelaire and
Flaubert in literature, Manet in painting.
c. Modernism was first called “avant-garde”, but this term is misleading; he does not
state why.
d. Contrary to the popular notion, Modernism and the avant-garde DID NOT come to
be by breaking with the past.
e. “It’s been in the nature, rather, of an attitude and an orientation: an attitude and
orientation to standards and levels: standards and levels of aesthetic quality in the
first and also last place.” -Look at how he even divides and systematically reduces
this quote. The way he chose to write this perfectly mirrors the logical modus
operandi in which modern art reductively attempts to define itself.
f. Modernism gets its standards from the “best” ideas of the past.
g. These best ways of going about things are not imitated by the Modernists, but
emulated.
h. “Being modern was a means of living up to the past.”
VII
a. It is true that artists before the origins of Modernism looked to the past for standards
of quality, but the Modernist’s seem to have a critical reception towards the pastwhich- allows them to adapt to their present time. They are not “recreating” the past
but “re-appropriating” the past.
b. The romantics looked to the past, but they were too nostalgic.
c. This caused an ‘academicization’ in the arts except in music and prose fiction.
d. Greenberg believes that the academics take the medium for granted.
VIII
a. Modernism’s reaction against romanticism started by becoming conscious of the
mediums used in art practice.
b. He particularly mentions poetry and painting.
IX
a. ‘Innovation’ and ‘newness’ are the hallmarks of Modernism. Innovation and
newness are ‘desired’ and ‘pursued’.
b. It became the big goal to innovate, and the attempts became more and more radical
and abrupt until the pursuit exhausted itself.
X (Mallarme, Schoenberg)
a. This rebellious and revolting spirit has both good and bad aspects, however the bad
outnumbers the good.
b. If rebellion and revolt were true properties of Modernism, then they would only
apply to aesthetic values, not political ends.
c. Modernism should not be tied with Bohemianism.
XI
a. He now wants to explain how Modernism arose in painting.
b. Modernism began with the ‘Pre-Raphaelites’. They were discontent with painting
of their day, claiming that its ‘realism’ was not “truthful” enough.
c. Colors were becoming more natural, so the Pre-Raphaelites created a brighter
color palette and more detailed realism.
d. They were determinately urgent to become succeed the past. This is a trait that
carried into Modernism proper.
e. All this was taking place toward the end of the 1950’s.
XII
a. Painting’s task became an aspiration towards an excellence in aesthetic value for
its own sake. It was an end to itself: art for art’s sake.
b. He reduces the Modernist painters’ task to this goal, “…for the sake of aesthetic
value, aesthetic quality, nothing else.”
XIII
a. Here Greenberg claims that this is the meat of his argument.
b. Although artists of all times seeked aesthetic excellence, Modernism is
different because aesthetic values and excellence is being threatened by
‘middlebrow’ demands and essentially Capitalism (the market).
c. “What singles Modernism out and gives it its place and identity more than
anything else is its response to a heightened sense of threats to aesthetic value:
threats from the social and material ambience, from the temper of the times, all
conveyed through the demands of a new and open cultural market, middlebrow
demands.”
d. Modernism therefore arose out of the mid nineteenth century when the ‘market’
(Capitalism) was well established and hegemonic.
XIV
a. His definition of Modernism: “[Modernism] consists in the continuing
endeavor to stem the decline of aesthetic standards threatened by the relative
democratization of culture under industrialism; that the overriding and
innermost logic of Modernism is to maintain the levels of the past in the face
of an opposition that hadn’t been present in the past.”
b. It may seem paradoxical, but all of Modernism is ‘backward looking’.
c. Therefore art does not have to do anything but exist for its own sake.
According to Greenberg it just has to be “good”.
d. Art in this definition is narcissistic.
XV
a. Postmodernism breaks from Modernism because art no longer has to be self-critical.
b. The only real question then is how have we superseded the modern not in a temporal
sense, but in a style-historical one.
c. Greenberg claims that this however is useless because any justification of
Postmodernism is ‘cloudy generalizations’.
XVI
a. Greenberg believes that the threat Modernism is fighting is more prevalent than
ever. This is because the threat is now entering in the field of art, and is no longer
just a matter that is outside the art circle.
b. Greenberg says the Modernism has ‘hurried’ into Postmodernism.
c. He believes that this effect is more dangerous than the ‘old-time philistines’ that also
threaten art. This is because Postmodernism brings in philistine taste disguised, as
it’s opposite.
d. To make superior art is a hard and laborious task, and appreciating good art has
become more taxing. This is because art had to be innovative, constantly pushing
the boundaries. Greenberg claims this has been the case for over 130 years.
e. However, “the urge to relax has always been there.” He accuses Postmodernism of
being part of this expression to “relax”.
f. This yearning to relax is first seen in the Dada and Surrealist movements, but Pop is
fully takes on this expression.
g. He believes that Postmodernism ideas represent ‘wishful thinking, and although
Postmodernism has penetrated the art world, Greenberg believes that Modernism
still survives.