Formalism's Other History

Author(s): Johanna Drucker

Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Dec., 1996), pp. 750-751
Published by: College Art Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3046221 .
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Letters

Formalism's Other History eliminated from consideration-pass as cred- tice with an analysis of the role of art as a
ible scholarly positions? Does Bois believe cultural practice that the full efficacy of art
I found Yve-Alain Bois's defensive remarks in that the relations of form to the specific social activity could be assessed. These splits within
support of his own particular brand of formal- institutions, historical circumstances, and cul- formalist factions in the 1920s mapped ten-
ism ("Whose Formalism?" Art Bulletin, LXXVII, tural practices in which their signification is sions still evident in the field today: the
no.1, 1996, 9-12) profoundly disturbing. One produced have no relation to the signifying attention to the symbolic orders of discourse
wonders why Bois misrepresents the place of functions themselves? If Bois believes that he as sites in themselves (Osip Brik, Shklovsky,
formalism and its role within contemporary has isolated the pure "Idea" of modern form Bois) contrasting with a desire to see the
art history; why he does a disservice to the as form, doesn't that contradict his own anti- symbolic discourse as inextricably bound to
history of formalist-based critical practices; idealist arguments? cultural practices (Medvedev, Bakhtin, and
and why he makes an unsupported attack on Collapsing the term "formalism" with the in a contemporary frame, Victor Burgin, Irit
Visual Studies. proper name of Greenberg, or even with Rogoff, Amelia Jones, Francis Frascina-the
Bois begins by dismissing his many critics Greenberg's own varied positions, is of course list goes on).
on the ground that they have not properly a historical distortion, as Bois well knows- Bois's statement that his formalist method
understood his work and its formalist prem- though it serves his purpose of validating his is historical because it engages with "what
ises. A discussion follows in which formalism particular late 20th-century art-historical ap- makes any given work of art possible at any
is confined to the single lineage of Clement proach. Formalist methodology originated in given time" is true only if one accepts a very
Greenberg, Rosalind Krauss, and (oddly, the mid-1910s with Russian critics' efforts to limited definition of cultural frame-one in
given his pluralistic, social-history approach) isolate their understanding of poetic form which art's discursive structures are only meta-
Timothy J. Clark. This exclusive narrowing of and language from historical linguistics and phorically, rather than literally, engaged with
the field seems to serve only one purpose: to the methods of the late 19th-century New historical and cultural concerns. While under-
invalidate any work which does not follow his Grammarians. But from the outset, its practi- standing Cubist collage in Bois's terms as the
own party line. But in any field of study of tioners in the Moscow Linguistics Circle and "issue of the status of signification in a world
classic or contemporary art, isn't there room the St. Petersburg Opajaz group struggled to where the illusions of unity condoned by the
and need for a range of arguments? Why remain self-conscious about the historical episteme of representation are being dis-
denigrate the archival work of Patricia Leigh- aspects of their own work (that method had a mantled" may be a necessaryaspect of reading
ton (though unnamed, she is obviously being history, and that historical circumstances had this work, it is not a sufficient one-since the
referred to as "one [who] speaks of Picasso's limiting and defining effects on the possibili- world, in fact, is not in the work. It seems
Cubist papiers colles" in relation to "this ties and transformations of enduring poetic essential to understand the ways in which the
artist's highly improbable interest in the Bal- and prose forms). The difficult problem of work is zn the world as well. The conditions of
kan war")? Or that of Serge Guilbaut and the relation between form and ideology, lan- possibility are institutionally mediated; they
Michael Leja, and a host of others-as in guage and culture, art and politics in every aren't embodied, autonomously, within the
Bois's invective against the study "of postwar sense of the word was actively debated. For delimited, formal boundaries of the object.
American painting" in "any analysis of its instance, Viktor Shklovsky and Vladimir There are many aspects of artistic function
market and institutions." Though Bois may Mayakovsky (who was involved in the debates which can't be accommodated within Bois's
not have use for such material, does his of the Moscow Linguistic Circle) took starkly narrow practice of formalism. Raymond Wil-
formalism have to be defended at the ex- opposite views. Shklovsky argued for the idea liams's classic essay "The Future of Cultural
pense of the value of such work? Leja's that "art was always free of life," that it was Studies," in The Politzcs of Modernism (Lon-
discussion of the "Modern Man" myth has "an independent system," and that formal- don, 1989), contains a lucid account of a
broadened our understanding of the ways in ism's primary concern was to understand countertradition of formalism, one which
which specific art-historical practices inter- literature (and "literariness") through the served as a preliminary model for Cultural
sect with contemporary definitions of human- "inseparability of form and meaning."' Maya- Studies. Extending Williams's thoughtful work
ism and its discontents to at least as great a kovsky took the position that there should be into a contemporary frame must, of course,
degree as Krauss's questioning of the auto- an attempt to understand and theorize (as take into account the changed conditions of
graphic trace in the evidently physical, ges- well as engage with) the interconnections of culture-late capitalism and its cultural mani-
tural, authorially expressive work of Pollock's this approach to art with the cultural sphere festations, and the place/role/ site/effect of
large drip paintings. Is it really formalism or of lived social life. By the 1920s this convic- visual art in these very different circum-
methodology which is at stake here? Bois's tion had become so strong among one group stances-all of which I think Bois would
closed circuit of references evidences increas- of theorists, particularly Pavel Medvedev and argue can be inferred from the changed
ing intolerance of oppositional voices. Bois Mikhail Bakhtin, that they formulated a Marx- "episteme of representation." But how?
seems convinced that he has isolated the fine ist theory of literary production. Their book, Which leads me to my final point: Bois's
filament of pure theoretical formalism-the titled in its English translation The Formal remarks on the topic of Visual Studies. For
internal dialogue ofform's definition of itself. Method zn Literary Scholarshzp(Cambridge and many art historians, the phantom of Visual
In the process he has transformed the richly London, 1978), can be taken either as a Studies-and its even larger corollary field,
heterogeneous field of modernism into a Marxist critique of formalism's limitations Cultural Studies-seems to be the present
repressive, narrow, tunnel view. In what uni- (and hence a dismissal) or, as seems closer to incarnation of all their fears about philistines
verse do such beliefs-that Adolph Gottlieb the case, as an attempt to engage formalism at the gate, of the desperate need to defend
or Clyfford Still (or the truly unmentionable with Marxism precisely because of the realiza- the canon of fine art at all costs from possible
figurative abstractionists Willem de Kooning, tion that it was only by combining the insights contamination. That Cultural Studies carries
Larry Rivers, and Grace Hartigan) should be into the specific qualities ofliterary/art prac- with it an activist agenda from communities

1. Victor Erlich, Russzan Formalzsm, New Haven/

London, 1965, 66-69, 112-17.

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of persons of color, women, and other minor-
ity groups is a not-inconsiderable aspect of its
identity-nor, probably, of the grounds on
which fears within elite enclaves are pro-
duced. This is especially true when such work
challenges the old modernist and avant-
garde ideas that form carries ideological
value (or that representation is an adequate
site of political engagement). It may (but also
may not) be necessary for normative conven-
tions to be destabilized in order to rework
relations between hegemony and representa-
tion. But that a rhetoric of politics is hardly
any politics at all seems not yet to have
occurred to those for whom the pointed
critiques of Cultural Studies pose such a
threat-possibly that of exposing the hypoc-
risy of those very scholars who took up the
mantle of the old avant-garde and its rubrics
only to make it a repressive and elitist enter-
prise. Art historians concerned with the cur-
rent status of the fine-art image have much to
gain from recognizing the ways in which
contemporary art practices are circumscribed
by the domains examined within Cultural
Studies. The image-saturated environment
in which fine art continues to have an identity
requires a theoretical understanding of the
distinctions between images produced in mass
media, entertainment, and commercial ven-
ues and their ongoing dialogue with contem-
porary art. The hard-and-fast distinctions so
essential to Greenberg's kitsch and Theodor
Adorno's culture-industry models no longer
exist-even if these concepts still function as
cornerstones of outmoded defenses of sup-
posedly avant-garde practices. Artists negoti-
ate the terrain of popular culture with increas-
ing interest and facility. Art historians can
(and do) too, and to the mutual benefit of
fine arts and critical theory. Again, it is the
defensive tone, the blanket dismissal, of fields
of inquiry whose intellectual and critical legiti-
macy has been long proved and accepted in a
broader critical community that I find disturb-
ing. It seems to return art' historians to an
exclusionary and elitist domain, as if only
Mondrian, Matisse, Pollock, and a handful of
other artists were of interest, and only an
even tinier number of critics producing valid
or useful insights into their work.
While I have sometimes found Professor
Bois's writing useful, and certainly appreciate
its creativity and rigor, his work, like that of
all the rest of us, represents only one highly
limited perspective in a very broad field. If all
the work on contemporary art were to disap-
pear save his and that of the writers he
sanctions, then our knowledge of and insight
into this field would be smaller than the
peephole in Duchamp's Etant donnis. And
what we would be allowed to look at might be
a lot less interesting. Why is someone in so
privileged and important an academic posi-
tion so closed-minded and ungenerous to-
ward the field of contemporary art and the
writers of its evolving history?
JOHANNA DRUCKER
Department ofthe HzstoryofArt
Yale Unzverszty
New Haven, Conn. 06520
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Response
I have some difficulty tracking down the
"unsupported attack" and "invective" that
Professor Drucker seems to have read into
my essay. My effort was merely to prize
"formalism" away from "Greenberg" by show-
ing: (1) that Greenberg was often idealist (as
ideologically generated meaning ["transcen-
dence"] gets in the way of an adequate
account of formal procedures); (2) that Green-
berg was frequently incapable of an accurate
attention to materials; and (3) that because of
both of the above, Greenberg was often
unable to deal with the historical specificity of
a given artist's choices. In other words, I
wanted nothing else than to hint that formal-
ism had been given a bad name in being
"collapsed with the proper name of Green-
berg," thus that it should be reconsidered,
and that other models of formalism, far more
attentive to the mediated relationship of the
work of art with its sociopolitical context,
were available.
YVE-ALAIN BOIS
Department of Fine Arts
Harvard Universzty
Cambrzdge,Mass. 02138
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