ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the nature of the relationship between modernist practice and modern philosophy, and the extent to which artistic discoveries are also philosophical discoveries. Comparing Michael Fried with Clement Greenberg on flatness and opticality, Michaels indicates how the former breaks with the latter's reductionism. This allows Fried to read the primacy Louis gives to bare canvas not as an "insistence on the materiality of the support" but as an attempt at transforming its surface into a "site of meaning". Fried's contribution is on Kierkegaard. Working to show that the Danish thinker is part of the anti-theatrical tradition, Fried analyzes remarks Constantin Constantius—the pseudonymous author of Repetition—makes about theater, and how it can provide the inexperienced with an opportunity to imagine different modes of existence. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
