Clement Greenberg's Definition of Modernism

This study will examine Clement Greenberg's definition of modernism (as expressed in Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz) and will then apply those statements to an analysis of one modernist and one non/anti- or post-modernist work of art, including statements by the artists themselves which will shed light on the nature of modernism, particularly as a theory of the teleology of art. The modernist work selected is Jackson Pollock's "Alchemy" (1947) and the anti-or post-modernist work is Arnulf Rainer's "Face Farces" (1969). Despite the fact that only twenty-two years separate the two works of art, a great chasm of intention and perception on the part of the artists separates the essence of the works.

The essence of modernism lies . . . in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the disciple itself. . . . What had to be exhibited and made explicit was that which was unique and irreducible not only in art in general but also in each particular art. each art had to determine, through the operations peculiar to itself, the effects peculiar and exclusive to itself (Stiles and Selz 2).

This aspect of Greenberg's definition perhaps refers more to the technical aspects of each art, although the technical and the teleological in modernism cannot truly be separated. Greenberg means that in painting, for example, the Modernists focused on the actual paint on the canvas more than any

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ck's abstract painting is disengaged from such concerns. This does not mean that modernist art was pessimistic, for it decidedly was not: The modernist paradigm is generally understood to reflect rational liberal humanism and a belief in progress established during the Enlightenment. This perspective presupposes the possibility of objectivity grounded in fundamental, intrinsic, and universal (or classic) transcendent values and essential, autonomous, and self-sufficient objects, texts, and actions (2-3). Teleology involves such beliefs--that there is a deeper meaning to life, and the teleology of art holds that such meaning can be, if not discovered, then at least suggested through art, and in this case modernist art. Non-modernist, anti-modernist, or post-modernist art holds the opposite, that there is no objective meaning to be discovered, and the individual artist cannot even discover his own identity in art The advent of postmodernist contingency placed modernist objectivity in doubt. Identity and human subjectivity were no longer understood as unified but rather were viewed as polymorphous, fragmented, and without center. . . . The modernist belief in truth was replaced by alternatives ranging from radical relativis

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