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FRIED
[1967]
and as projected
perspectiveof recent Modernist painting, antithetical art?Theanswer Iwant to propose is this: the literalist espousal ofobject hood amounts
to
points to its source. Judd himselfhas acknowledged enterprise interesting' the problematic
character
pleafora new genre of theatre; and theatre is now the negation of art. literalist sensibility is theatrical because, to beginwith, it is concerned with the actual circumstances inwhich the beholder encounters literalist work. Morris
l... J
with time - mo. r precise Iy, . - is, I suggest, of the experience theatrical:
makes this explicit. Whereas in previous art 'what is to be had from the work is located strictly within [it]', the experienceofliteralist art is of an object in a situation that, Yirtuallybydefinition, includes the beholder -one
though the sense which, at bottom, theatre addresses sense oftemporality, simultaneously apprehended preoccupation of time both passing and to come, and receding, as if ... 'This
l... J
The theatricality of Morris' notion of the 'nonpersonal or public mode' seems obvious: the largeness inconjunction with its nonrelational, ofthe piece,
approaching
unitary character,
difference between It is
distances the beholder - not just physically but psychically,ttts, one might say, precisely this distancing that makes the beholder a subject and the piece in question ... an object [ ... } Furthermore, the presence ofliteralistart, which Greenberg was the first to analyse, is basically a theatrical effector quality-a kind of stage presence. not just ofthe obtrusiveness It is a function,
Anthony Caro in no time at all, but because at every moment the work itselfis wholly manifest
1 The connection experience between spatial ity recession
I... J
and some such were a in
of temporal
ness ofliteralist work, but ofthe special complicity that that work extorts from the beholder. Something have presence when it demands is said to
kind of natur aj metaphor nuch Surrealist Tanguy, Magritte for example, presentiment, painting
for the second - is present (e.g., de Chirico, temporality dread, anxiety, - is often Ilelt ,
... ) Moreover,
- manifested.
into account, that he take it seriously - and when the fulfilmentofthat demand consists simply in being aware ... J
as expectation,
stasis
the
ofitand, so to speak, in acting accordingly[ What has compelled Modernist suspend its own objecthood
in fact,
painting to defeat or
as the latter
internal to itself, but the same general, enveloping, Infectious theatricality that corrupted literalist sensibility
in the work of the above painters), Both employ imagery fragmentary. that
be noted.
in the first place and in the grip of which the developments in question -and Modernist painting in general-are seen
incomplete; of objects
anthropomorphiz.ing of objects
and presenceless
(in Sur-r-eall sm the use of explicit); effects both are of 'presence' and persons
was the need to break the fingers ofthis an issue for Modernist
and isolate
Objects
Objecthood has also become an issue for Modernist sculpture. Tnis is true despite the fact that sculpture, three-dimensional, resembles being
in situations art
j
the closed
fici all ancs c epe are as i nrport ant to Sur-r-eal i sm as to (Tony Smith, etc. it will be recalled, landscapes'.) Surrealist described This
as 'Surrealist
literalist work in a way that painting does not[ ... } Itmay seem paradoxical to claim both that literalist sensibility aspires to an ideal of'something understand' everyone can itself
affinlty can be summed up by saying that sens i b t 1 i t y as man; fested artists,
theatrical.
to the beholder alone, but the paradox is only apparent. Someone has merely to enter the room in which a literalist work has been placed to become that beholder, that audience of one - almost as though the work in question has been waiting for him. And in as much as literalist work depends on the beholder, is incomplete without him. it has
however, to be understood
as art;
a conspiCUOUS example of major work that described sculpture. sigl1i/ical1ce as theatrical On the other that Smith's
st
not wHhout
been waiting for him. And once he is in the room the work refuses,obstinately, to let him alone-which is to say, it
landscape Michael Fried, reprinted was the parade
in Minima) Art:
him[ ... ] Itis, I think, significant that in their various statements the literalists have largely avoided the issue of value or quality at the same time as they have shown considerable uncertainty as to whether or not what they are making is art. To describe their enterprise as an attempt to establish