Practice question · Multiple choice
A painter shows a canvas of flat red bands and a viewer asks what it is a picture of. Why does Greenberg's argument treat that question as misdirected rather than merely unanswerable?
Hints
- Greenberg is arguing about what is proper to the medium.
- Depicting a scene is something painting shares with photography and theatre.
Show the answer
C. It asks painting to share other arts' tasks, when modernism holds each must do solely what it can
Why
For Greenberg each art secures itself by concentrating on what is unique to it, and what is unique to painting is the flat bounded surface. Depiction is shared with photography and the stage, so a demand for a subject asks painting to compete where it is weakest. It is a claim about the medium, not a denial that pictures mean anything.
Practise The Pictorial Language
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