ABSTRACT
This study examines the roots of value and evaluation in writing about modern art. Its focus is on the interwoven criticism, or what I shall call ‘critical complexities’, of three authors: Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, and T.J. Clark. Only a little familiarity with some of their now extremely well-known essays and books should indicate that ‘criticism’ in the sense in which I will use it does not exclude other forms of interest and kinds of writing evident in their works. Two of these forms of interest and kinds of writing have the names theory and history. One of my chief aims here is to show how criticism, theory, and history are inextricably bound up together within Greenberg’s, Fried’s, and Clark’s writings. I shall argue, in the end, that Clark’s work (and his interests) differ fundamentally – in critical, theoretical, and political terms – from those of Greenberg and Fried. But what the three share, fundamentally, is a belief that criticism (that is, saying what art is good or bad, and why), theory (that is, mobilizing ‘first principles’ about the nature of the world, and how it may be understood), and history (that is, accounting for change and development in culture and society) are interconnected and mutually conditioning things. I will go on to say much more about these conjoined forms of attention, understanding, and judgement. ‘Value’ and ‘evaluation’ will emerge as products and processes of discrimination inevitably shaped by the urgency of these writers’ interdependent critical, theoretical, and historical perspectives. I chose to use the term ‘roots’ in my opening sentence. It has two
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C h a p t e r 1
Dictionary calls ‘a person’s emotional attachment to a place in which the person, or his or her family has lived for a long time’. The critical complexities of Greenberg, Fried, and Clark, whatever their differences and antagonisms (I shall come to stress these, as my own interests become clearer) may be seen as ‘places’, or ‘positions’, that also share this at once intellectual and emotional drive or pitch. This quality to their writings has been one of the factors that continues to draw me to them: as authors, and as flesh-and-blood people that I believe I have glimpsed through their writing.
