BEGINNINGS OF MODERNISM
Clement GREENBERG
1983
[34]
[…] Art hasn't and probably never will be defined acceptably, yet this doesn't prevent us from telling the difference by and large between art and everything else. We do that by intuition...
[35]
[…] Modernism never knew a program, not when it was the real thing; all it knew was an ideal: 'pure' art, illusory in itself, but immensely useful, as it proved, insofar as it served as something like a beacon.
[36]
The question is why modernity, together with art for art's sake, should have compelled innovation in such a way as it had never, apparently, been compelled before: disturbingly, shockingly, provocatively. There had always been innovation in the arts insofar as they maintained quality. But before modernism innovation had never been so startling […] Originality, the incision of the individual […] had always been of the essence to the vitality of art, its quality, its effectiveness. But only with modernism did artistic innovation begin to innovate so disruptively to taste, with such shock, with such disorienting effect. Why? The case has been with us for a hundred-odd years, but still hardly any real attention has been paid to the question it raises.
Every successive move of modernism delivered a shock at first to cultivated, 'elite' taste, not just to that of philistines. […] After a generation or so it became assimilated, accepted in each case. Modernist art in almost every medium turned out to be art as art, at bottom, had been before. This despite all talk about 'breaks', revolutions, and so forth. Continuity persisted. […] Innovation in the arts had been resisted before modernism, not always but often enough. But still, not in the same way, not with an equal shock, not with such outrage. The resistance modernism met at each step was newer than its innovations themselves. Never before […] had there been such a blocking off of aesthetic reaction, such an initial blindness, deafness, or incomprehension.
The urgency of modernist innovation and the resistance to it were questions that involve one another, as do their answers. Modernism has meant, among other things, the devolution of a tradition. The continued production of superior aesthetic value after the mid-nineteenth century began, turn by turn in most of the arts, to require the devolution, the unraveling — not so much the dismantling — of the Renaissance tradition of common sense rationality, conformity to ostensible nature […], and conformity, too, to the way things in general seemed to happen. […] Devolution is the general rule in modernism, not revolution.
The very fact of devolution might seem to account for the resistance to modernist innovation. Taste, habits, have been disoriented, just as disturbingly as if there had been revolution instead of devolution. And maybe devolution can be more disturbing and disorienting than outright revolution. And maybe devolution can also generate a greater momentum of innovation, a greater urgency. […]
[38-39]
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