ABSTRACT
This chapter will seek to establish the salient aspects of Vattimo’s ideas together with an initial consideration of its imbrication with late modernist painting in the US during the ten years that historically frames the study. At stake, in one sense, was the question of how philosophy and painting could continue to remain viable during the historical moment when the project of modernism had all but been exhausted. The potential collapse of a version of artistic modernism that had been promulgated by art critics including Clement Greenberg will be considered in relation to a broader set of shifts with regard to art’s scope and import during the period in question.
