ABSTRACT
Nineteen ninety-seven marks the thirtieth anniversary of one of the most vexed points of intersection of critical discourses on the visual arts and performance. I am referring to Michael Fried’s notorious essay “Art and Objecthood,” first published in Artforum in 1967. In this polemic against minimalist (or, as he calls it, literalist) art, Fried condemns minimalism for what he describes as its inherent theatricality and dependence on presence. Fried’s strident and intemperate tone, as well as his apparently virulent, underexplained antitheatricalism, have made his essay an easy target, especially for critics championing post-abstract art and postmodernist performance. My objectives here are to offer a hopefully somewhat more nuanced reading of Fried’s essay than it usually receives from champions of postmodernism, and to indicate its importance in establishing the terms of much critical discussion of postmodernism in the visual arts and performance, especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
