Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews

by Michael Fried

Overview

Much acclaimed and highly controversial, Michael Fried's art criticism defines the contours of late modernism in the visual arts. This volume contains twenty-seven pieces, including the influential introduction to the catalog for Three American Painters, the text of his book Morris Louis, and the renowned "Art and Objecthood." Originally published between 1962 and 1977, they continue to generate debate today. These are uncompromising, exciting, and impassioned writings, aware of their transformative power during a time of intense controversy about the nature of modernism and the aims and essence of advanced painting and sculpture.

Ranging from brief reviews to extended essays, and including major critiques of Jackson Pollock, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella, and Anthony Caro, these writings establish a set of basic terms for understanding key issues in high modernism: the viability of Clement Greenberg’s account of the infralogic of modernism, the status of figuration after Pollock, the centrality of the problem of shape, the nature of pictorial and sculptural abstraction, and the relationship between work and beholder. In a number of essays Fried contrasts the modernist enterprise with minimalist or literalist art, and, taking a position that remains provocative to this day, he argues that minimalism is essentially a genre of theater, hence artistically self-defeating.

For this volume Fried has also provided an extensive introductory essay in which he discusses how he became an art critic, clarifies his intentions in his art criticism, and draws crucial distinctions between his art criticism and the art history he went on to write. The result is a book that is simply indispensable for anyone concerned with modernist painting and sculpture and the task of art criticism in our time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226263199
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	04/18/1998
Edition description:	1
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Art critic, art historian, literary critic-historian, and poet Michael Fried is the J. R. Herbert Boone Emeritus Professor of Humanities and the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University. His many books include The Moment of Caravaggio.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
An Introduction to My Art Criticism
Pt. 1: 1966-77
Shape as Form: Frank Stella's Irregular Polygons (1966)
Morris Louis (1966-67)
Jules Olitski (1966-67)
Art and Objecthood (1967)
New Work by Anthony Caro (1967)
Ronald Davis: Surface and Illusion (1967)
Two Sculptures by Anthony Caro (1968)
Recent Work by Kenneth Noland (1969)
Caro's Abstractness (1970)
Problems of Polychromy: New Sculptures by Michael Bolus (1971)
Larry Poons's New Paintings (1972)
Anthony Caro's Table Sculptures, 1966-77 (1977)
Pt. 2: 1965
Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella (1965)
Pt. 3: 1962-64
Anthony Caro (1963)
Frank Stella (1963)
New York Letter: Oldenburg, Chamberlain (October 25, 1962)
New York Letter: Louis, Chamberlain and Stella, Indiana (November 25, 1962)
New York Letter: Warhol (December 25, 1962)
New York Letter: Johns (February 25, 1963)
New York Letter: Hofmann (April 25, 1963)
New York Letter: Noland, Thiebaud (May 25, 1963)
New York Letter: Hofmann, Davis (December 5, 1963)
New York Letter: Kelly, Poons (December-January 1963-64)
New York Letter: Judd (February 15, 1964)
New York Letter: De Kooning Drawings (April 25, 1964)
New York Letter: Olitski, Jenkins, Thiebaud, Twombly (May 1964)
New York Letter: Brach, Chamberlain, Irwin (Summer 1964)
Writings by Michael Fried, 1959-77, Exclusive of Poetry
Index of Names in "An Introduction to My Art Criticism"

What People are Saying About This

Thomas Crow

Anyne with serious interest in visual art needs to read this book: that is simply the judgment of history, which supersedes any mere reviewer's recommendation. So conspicuous has been Michael Fried's profile as high Modernism's most forceful and articulate standard-bearer that the detailed substance underlying this reputation has been more often assumed than examined or re-examined. The appearance of this collection removes any reason for such carelessness -- Artforum

Editorial Reviews

Beginning his career as an art critic, Fried, now a noted scholar at Johns Hopkins University, published some of the most important critiques of the emerging art of the 1960s. In this volume, Fried has gathered the bulk of the essays and reviews he published between 1962 and 1977. Fried's criticism focused on key artists Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Frank Stella, and most of the essays in this volume concern these artists or the work of Jackson Pollock. Fried has chosen to arrange the works in reverse chronological order, allowing the reader to see not what criticism grew into but the roots from which it sprang. The centerpiece of the collection is the 1967 title piece, "Art and Objecthood," which continues to address many of the current approaches to nonrepresentational art and is enhanced in the larger setting of Fried's work. A prefatory essay provides autobiographical information and contextualizes the collection. Recommended for academic collections with an interest in contemporary art.Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC

Library Journal

Reprints 27 essays and other texts by art critic Fried (humanities, Johns Hopkins U.) originally published between 1962 and 1977, with a long introduction in which he explains how he came to write art criticism and clarifies his views on a number of topics. The pieces include his introduction to the catalog for , the text of his book , and the influential title essay. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

Anyone with serious interest in visual art needs to read this book: that is simply the judgment of history, which supersedes any mere reviewer's recommendation.
— Artforum

Thomas Crow