Art now: What is the theoretical horizon within which contemporary practice is understood?

“Art and Object” an essay by art critic Michael Fried (1967) published in Artforum was regarded as controversial. In fact Fried himself stated “This essay will be read as an attack on certain artists (and critics) and a defense for others”. An “attack”, because Fried critically picks apart the genre of minimalist art, for which he coined the phrase “literalist” art. Fried examines literalist art against that of modernist painting and sculpture, to argue “What is it about objecthood as projected and hypostatized by the literalist that makes it, if only from the perspective of recent modernist painting antithetical to art?”

Fried uses the literalist’s essential theory of “objecthood” to unhinge its own argument. His claim that the theory of “objecthood” does more in fact to reaffirm modernist painting and sculpture’s relevance by proving their value beyond operating simply as objects as with literalist art. Fried suggests that there seems to be something else; an extra element present in modernist painting and sculpture which holds our interest and this Fried insists is the point of art.

This ‘extra element’, ‘something else’ I refer to, also occurs in the in the book “Thinking through Craft”, by the Academic Glenn Adamson (2007)

Included in chapter 3:-“Skilled” we are given the scenario in the studio of “the famous potter Bernard Leach.”

I believe Adamson presents a valid point in arguing for the importance of ‘skill’; that is the skill involved and/or required in the craft of making. What I feel is relevant within this complex discussion surrounding ‘skill’ is that the point within the craft work of Leach, is not merely in its functional or literal object value.

This can be illustrated in the statement by the potter Bill Marshal, deemed in the profession as “technically the best thrower in the pottery”. In his evaluation of Leach’s work he remarks, “Bernard can’t throw worth a damn. But he makes better pots than any of us”. This suggests some other phenomena affecting our experience of and interaction with works of this calibre.  

 Fried quotes the artist Robert Morris regarding his view, on how art should aim to communicate -” Whereas in previous art – “what is to be had from the work is located strictly within (it), “the experience of literalist art is of an object...”. This seems interesting with regards to my previous point about the idea of an extra element present; or at play within a work creating a shift that I will suggest when a work becomes something to be evaluated; or comprehended as art?      

Something that I found most interesting in Fried’s essay was his shift in tone during the conclusion. For what had begun as a rigorous critical “attack” develops a tone more sympathetic to the literalist’s plight.

Fried finishes by saying - “concepts of literalism and theater have specifically motivated what I have written. More generally, however, I have wanted to call attention to the utter pervasiveness- the virtual universality-of the sensibility or mode of being which I have characterized as corrupted or perverted by theater.” We are all literalists most of our lives. Presentness is grace.”

Fried’s conclusive words in “Art and object” appear driven by a desire to sustain belief in literalism as an ideal theory? If in fact he was convinced. However his review would prove the literalist’s “espousal” failed to convince him. For when Fried analyses the fundamental essence of literalist’s art, that which is “Objecthood,” he finds fundamental faults… “The literalist espousal of objecthood amounts to nothing more than theater and theater is now the negation of art.”

Glenn Adamson Thinking Through Craft, Oxford: Berg, 2007, pp.69-101.

Michael Fried "Art and Object" Artforum, vol. V no.10, June 1967, pp. 12-23