Literalist Art example essay topic

Michael Fried is one of the very prominent people of art of the 20th Century. In this essay we are going to evaluate some of his well-known works in order to figure out the answer to the question of why is duration considered to be so troublesome to the category of art-as-such for Michael Fried? The artist actually thought that duration has a very strong influence upon the perception of the artworks whether it is a novel story or a painting masterpiece. We may find the reasons to this assumption in the attitudes expressed by Fried in his prominent works such as his article Art and Objecthood and also his great book called Menzel's Realism: Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Berlin. In order to see more clearly into artists practice and his attitude towards the concept of duration in art, it is sometimes good to go back in time. Discussions about and around painting have not really gone that far from what was said in the heyday of modern painting, and certain, almost rustic concepts, ideals and values still hold for some.

Lets look at one of them. Art historian Michael Frieds concepts of theatricality and duration are useful in relation to the various artists in the exhibition. Frieds ideals and opinions about paintings position and role are a long way from those shared by contemporary practitioners. His categories and criteria can in any case be employed in reverse. The things he sees as most abhorrent are in fact those most valued by many of the artists in this exhibition. The article Art and Objecthood was first published in Artforum in 1967.

In it Fried attacked Donald Judd and Robert Morris and other Minimalists for being too literalist. He points out some significant assumptions concerning the great deal of significance of the concept of duration in artworks. According to Fried, decadent literalist, i.e. Minimal, art theatricalize d the relationship between the artwork and the viewer. For him the experience of the true and authentic modernist artwork involved the suspension both of object hood and of the sense of duration of time. One of the cardinal sins for Fried was literalist works time-based quality: the experience of such works persisted in time.

Literalist art was essentially a presentment of endless, or indefinite, duration. The literalist preoccupation with time - more precisely with the duration of the experience - was paradigmatic ally theatrical. This preoccupation marked the profound difference between literalist work and modernist painting and sculpture. It was as though ones experience of the latter had no duration, because at every moment the work itself was wholly manifest.

It was this continuous, and entire presentness, amounting to perpetual creation itself, to instantaneousness. For Fried it was precisely this virtue of modernist works presentness and instantaneousness that made them defeat theatre. It was above all the condition of painting and sculpture of existing and constituting a continuous and perpetual present. What we have been at pains to show is just the opposite.

Instead of freezing the moment, it is vital to acknowledge the importance of time and its use. (Finly) According to Fried, literalist art was the expression of a general and pervasive condition. According to modernist principles, Fried found it intolerable that art forms could be mixed or that there were no clear categories of painting, poetry or sculpture. Unitary Specific Objects, in which the values of wholeness, singleness and invincibility were manifest, were for Fried basically hollow. Various techniques, along with opposition to the idea that painting should be this or that - that the only acceptable or relevant way is to use the easel format - come to the fore with, e.g. Jukka Korkeilas and John Kr ners works in this exhibition.

Besides painting, K rner works extensively with ceramics and installations. While his paintings are usually shown in a traditional way, on the wall - as in this exhibition - he likes to create environments out of works in different media. He makes this clear in the interview: I believe in environments and want to create spaces and situations where you are not in front of a painting, but rather in an environment that includes the architectural and institutional setting into which the works are placed. It is important for me to make works that have physical, bodily effects, so that this also questions the roles of both the work of art and the viewer. (Finly).