Modern Art And Modernism: A Critical Anthology (Icon Editions)

337 Pages·1983·59.01 MB·English

by  Francis Frascina

Modern Art and Modernism:
A Critical Anthology
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Modern Art and Modernism:
A Critical Anthology
Edited by Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison
with the assistance of Deirdre Paul
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This reader is one part of an Open University integrated teaching system and the selection
is therefore related to other material available to students. It is designed to evoke the critical
understanding of students. Opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of the course
team or of the University.
MODERN ART AND MODERNISM. Copyright © The Open University 1982. All rights
reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper
and Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022. Published
simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto.
Published by Westview Press, A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Reprinted 1984, 1986, 1987
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Modern art and modernism.
(Icon editions)
Includes index.
1. Art, Modern—19th century—Addresses, essays,
lectures. 2. Art, Modern—20th century—Addresses,
essays, lectures. 3. Modernism (Art)—Addresses, essays,
lectures. I. Frascina, Francis. II. Harrison, Charles.
III. Paul, Deirdre.
N6447.M6 1982 709'.04 82-48153
ISBN 0-06-430124-9 (pbk.)
PERSEUS
3 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21201918
POD °
ON DEMAND
Contents
Introduction 1
Introductory Texts 3
1. Clement Greenberg Modernist Painting 5
2. Sir Karl Popper Historical Interpretation 11
Section One Modern Life, Modernity and Modernism
3. Charles Baudelaire The Salon of 1846: On the Heroism of Modern
Life 17
4. Charles Baudelaire The Salon of 1859: The Modern Public and
Photography 19
5. Charles Baudelaire The Painter of Modern Life 23
6. Emile Zola Edouard Manet 29
7. Stephane Mallarmi The Impressionists and Edouard Manet 39
8. JK. Huysmans 'L'Exposition des Independants' in 1880 45
9. Maurice Denis From Gauguin and Van Gogh to Classicism 51
10. Maurice Denis Cezanne 57
Section Two The Development of Modernism
11. CliveBell The Aesthetic Hypothesis 67
12. CliveBell The Debt to Cezanne 75
13. Roger Fry An Essay in Aesthetics 79
14. Roger Fry The French Post-Impressionists 89
15. Clement Greenberg 'American-Type' Painting 93
16. Clement Greenberg Collage 105
17. Clement Greenberg Master Leger 109
18. Michael Fried Three American Painters 115
19. Herbert Read What is Revolutionary Art? 123
20. Donald Judd Barnett Newman 129
Section Three Abstraction
21. Nikolai Tarabukin From the Easel to the Machine 135
22. Bertolt Brecht On Non-Objective Painting 143
23. Hilla Rebay The Beauty of Non-Objectivity 145
24. Ernst Gombrich Illusion and Visual Deadlock 149
Section Four Expressionism
25. Wilhelm Worringer Abstraction and Empathy 159
26. Hermann Bahr Expressionism
27. Sheldon Cheney Abstraction and Mysticism 171
28. Ernst Gombrich Expression and Communication 177
29. Nelson Goodman Art and Inquiry 191
Section Five Art and Society
30. Julius Meier-Graefe The Development of Modern Art 205
31. Leon Trotsky Literature and Revolution 209
32. Walter Benjamin The Author as Producer 213
33. Walter Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction 217
34. PaulEluard Poetic Evidence 221
35. Bertolt Brecht Popularity and Realism 227
36. Arnold Hauser The Sociological Approach: The Concept of Ideology
in the History of Art 233
37. JohnBerger Leger 239
38. Nicos Hadjinicolaou Art History and Class Struggle 243
39. T.J. Clark On the Social History of Art 249
40. T.J.Clark Preliminaries to a Possible Treatment of Olympia
in 1865 259
41. Eunice Lipton The Laundress in Late Nineteenth-century French
Culture 275
42. Fred Orton and Griselda Pollock Les Donnees Bretonnantes: La
Prairie de la Representation 285
Index 305
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Introduction
In giving this book the title of Modem Art and Modernism we mean to draw attention
to the relationship between the art of the modern period and the forms of criticism
which have been developed to interpret and explain it. Art does not develop
independently of criticism. Such writers as Baudelaire, Fry and Greenberg have
often been seen as influential figures who have helped to determine the course of art.
It is hoped that this book will provide some material for consideration of the
inter-relationship between art and ideas about art.
This anthology was originally compiled as a reader for an Open University course
on Modem Art and Modernism: Manet to Pollock. The selection was therefore
designed primarily to serve specific needs and interests in relation to other teaching
material. This also helps to account for the five main headings under which the texts
are grouped. It should be recognized that there is considerable overlap between
them. The aim of the course is to consider the history of modern art in the light of the
prevailing body of theory, which we identify as 'Modernism', and to test the
explanatory power of this theory in the light of alternative forms of explanation and
interpretation. In particular, the intention has been to examine both the circum
stances under which modern an has been produced, and those under which critical
theories and forms of interpretation have themselves been produced.
A work of criticism inevitably reflects a response at a particular historical
moment and in the light of particular commitments and interests. Yet influential
critical interpretations have often tended to establish the terms of reference for
interpretation and appraisal during subsequent generations. In offering a selection
of critical and theoretical texts covering the span of the modern period in art, we have
hoped to encourage study of the historical - and historically specific - nature of
debate about the meaning of art.
We have not attempted to produce a coherent selection or to map out a coherent
development. The criticism of modern art has itself proceeded unevenly, and often
in terms of the competition between different types of interpretation, expressing
different interests, and variously connected to art itself. What we have attempted to
do is to select some vivid and typical examples of Modernist criticism at different
stages of its development (Denis, Bell, Fry, Cheney, Greenberg), and also of types of
art theory and criticism which stand outside this principal current, either because
they derive from consciously opposed points of view (Trotsky, Brecht, Benjamin),
or because they represent the interests of movements outside the Modernist main
stream (Tarabukin, Eluard), or by virtue of their roots in other methods and discip
lines (Goodman). Some of the typical examples of modern art criticism are typically
opaque and confusing (Worringer, Bahr, Rebay). That this does not seem to have
counted against their authority and influence is in itself of interest. One issue which
does seem to distinguish Modernist theories from those critical texts and methods
which we have grouped under the heading of 'Art and Society', is that the issue of the
class character of culture is seen as crucial in the latter, while it is generally not raised
at all in the former.
Debate will continue about the meaning of art and about meaning in art. The
issues at stake have their roots both in the history of art and in the history of art