The Reenchantment of Art. - book reviews

Notes

1. Much of the problem with critical and art-historical attempts to come to grips with Postmodernism also has arisen from our generally poor grasp of Modernism, which we tend to view too narrowly in Greenbergian terms. The various "isms" that collectively constituted the Modernist enterprise subscribed, I would argue, to a nexus of beliefs, the chief among them being: (1) bourgeois culture is fatally flawed; (2) the artist works outside that culture in a finer, bohemian realm; (3) the history of modern art demonstrates a progressive development; and (4) progressive art can effect social progress. Even Greenberg thought that the purist art he advocated had a socially progressive impact. At the end of "Art and Culture" (1939) he notes: "Capitalism in decline finds that whatever of quality it is still capable of producing becomes almost invariably a threat to its own existence. Advances in culture . . . corrode the very society under whose aegis they are made possible." Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 21.

2. Arnheim openly admits to a lack of concern with the historical factors or issues of the situation he would address: "I confess to be thoroughly uninterested in such current notions as modernism, premodernism, or postmodernism. They are products of the myopia generated by the faits divers of the day".

3. It is time that we in the arts more fully acknowledge, as many philosophers and literary critics have, that Modernism was a manifestation of a larger, and in certain respects ongoing, Enlightenment project.

4. In a recent interview Werckmeister suggested that his characterization of the era depended on the revolutionary activities documented in Chris Marker's four-hour film, The Grin without the Cat (ca. 1977). Mitchell B. Merback, "Interview with Otto Karl Werckmeister," Chicago Art Journal 2, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 32-33. Those activities had only a modest impact on American arts and letters.

5. See ibid., 32, and Citadel Culture, 16-17 and 48.

6. See Merback, "Interview with Otto Karl Werckmeister," 32.

7. See Dore Ashton, The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning (New York: Penguin, 1972), 122-25.

8. Paul Taylor, "Interview with Hans Haacke," Flash Art 132 (February/March 1986): 41.

BRADFORD R. COLLINS, a CAA Board member, teaches contemporary art history at the University of South Carolina. He is currently editing Current Methodologies: 15 Approaches to Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergere.

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