The Afterlife of Medium-Specificity I

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3 brings out Fried’s debts to Stanley Cavell’s reading of the later Wittgenstein, particularly his understanding of conventions as both a priori, yet also part of the natural history of the species, grounded in (evolving) ‘forms of life’. This permeates Fried’s early criticism, notably his critique of Minimalism, which turns on his differences with Greenberg over the nature of artistic conventions. Contra Greenberg, Fried holds that while media do have distinct essences, these do not endure transhistorically, but rather develop and change under the pressure of recent history. The chapter suggests these criticisms may rebound on Fried’s own critique of Minimalism, something the author brings out by considering the work of Gerhard Richter and Jeff Wall. On the Fried-Cavell conception of artistic media, Richter emerges as aspiring to make photographs by painting, and Wall as aspiring to make paintings with the means of photography. Once that can be true, there is no longer any clearly defined space between media that can be rejected as ‘theatre’, irrespective of whether Minimalism is indeed ‘theatrical’.