Modernism and Formalism

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 1 provides a philosophical reconstruction of the internal structure of Greenbergian theory, affording it the kind of sustained, scholarly attention that it has not previously received from a philosopher. Treated in the round—and not, as is more typical, dismissed on the basis of some of the more obvious argumentative shortcomings of his better-known essays—Greenbergian theory repays such treatment. The theory marries a formalist conception of aesthetic judgement with a medium-specific theory of artistic development. The chapter focuses on the depth of the connection Greenberg succeeded in forging between these two wings of his theory, pivoting in particular on his understanding of artistic conventions. Modernism works by artists testing the conventions of a given medium as they inherit them as to their necessity or otherwise. Formalism works by judging the state in which a work leaves the conventions of its medium having so tested them. The upshot was a tight correlation between aesthetic value and medium-specificity at the core of Greenbergian theory.