Greenberg’s Formalism
Greenberg’s formalism tended to deracinate the work produced – for the artist and the viewer alike. The work of art was to be considered outside of the psychological, social, and economic context in which it had been made or was shown. The binary approach, for example, painterly vs. linear, was restrictive. This left room for an aggressive assertion of a favored look and style.
My difficulty with art historical and critical terms is that they exist at such a tangent to the practice of painting. “Formalism” is complex and contentious as a critical term, and assumed various guises over time – Heinrich Wölfflin, Roger Fry, Clement Greenberg. Greenberg’s formalism became linked with the style of the work he supported ¬– color field painting. Although I don’t know formalism on any deep art critical level, I do know that it has been utilized to remove a sense of the world from the practice of painting, and has enabled the consideration of a painting as an autonomous object, often outside of any social system. I refute this both obliquely and explicitly.