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
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Letters

Formalism's Other History

eliminated from consideration-pass

as credible scholarly positions? Does Bois believe
I found Yve-Alain Bois's defensive remarks in
that the relations of form to the specific social
institutions, historical circumstances, and culsupport of his own particular brand of formalism ("Whose Formalism?" Art Bulletin, LXXVII, tural practices in which their signification is
no.1, 1996, 9-12) profoundly disturbing. One
produced have no relation to the signifying
wonders why Bois misrepresents the place of
functions themselves? If Bois believes that he
formalism and its role within contemporary
has isolated the pure "Idea" of modern form
art history; why he does a disservice to the
as form, doesn't that contradict his own antiidealist arguments?
history of formalist-based critical practices;
and why he makes an unsupported attack on
Collapsing the term "formalism" with the
Visual Studies.
proper name of Greenberg, or even with
Bois begins by dismissing his many critics
Greenberg's own varied positions, is of course
on the ground that they have not properly
a historical distortion, as Bois well knowsunderstood his work and its formalist premthough it serves his purpose of validating his
ises. A discussion follows in which formalism
particular late 20th-century art-historical apis confined to the single lineage of Clement
proach. Formalist methodology originated in
the mid-1910s with Russian critics' efforts to
Greenberg, Rosalind Krauss, and (oddly,
isolate their understanding of poetic form
given his pluralistic, social-history approach)
and language from historical linguistics and
Timothy J. Clark. This exclusive narrowing of
the field seems to serve only one purpose: to
the methods of the late 19th-century New
invalidate any work which does not follow his
Grammarians. But from the outset, its practiown party line. But in any field of study of
tioners in the Moscow Linguistics Circle and
classic or contemporary art, isn't there room
the St. Petersburg Opajaz group struggled to
and need for a range of arguments? Why
remain self-conscious about the historical
denigrate the archival work of Patricia Leighaspects of their own work (that method had a
ton (though unnamed, she is obviously being
history, and that historical circumstances had
referred to as "one [who] speaks of Picasso's
limiting and defining effects on the possibiliCubist papiers colles" in relation to "this
ties and transformations of enduring poetic
and prose forms). The difficult problem of
artist's highly improbable interest in the Balkan war")? Or that of Serge Guilbaut and
the relation between form and ideology, lanin
Michael Leja, and a host of others-as
guage and culture, art and politics in every
Bois's invective against the study "of postwar
sense of the word was actively debated. For
American painting" in "any analysis of its
instance, Viktor Shklovsky and Vladimir
market and institutions." Though Bois may
Mayakovsky (who was involved in the debates
of the Moscow Linguistic Circle) took starkly
not have use for such material, does his
formalism have to be defended at the exopposite views. Shklovsky argued for the idea
that "art was always free of life," that it was
pense of the value of such work? Leja's
discussion of the "Modern Man" myth has
"an independent system," and that formalbroadened our understanding of the ways in
ism's primary concern was to understand
literature (and "literariness") through the
which specific art-historical practices intersect with contemporary definitions of human"inseparability of form and meaning."' Mayaism and its discontents to at least as great a
kovsky took the position that there should be
an attempt to understand and theorize (as
degree as Krauss's questioning of the autowell as engage with) the interconnections of
graphic trace in the evidently physical, gesthis approach to art with the cultural sphere
tural, authorially expressive work of Pollock's
of lived social life. By the 1920s this conviclarge drip paintings. Is it really formalism or
tion had become so strong among one group
methodology which is at stake here? Bois's
of theorists, particularly Pavel Medvedev and
closed circuit of references evidences increasMikhail Bakhtin, that they formulated a Marxing intolerance of oppositional voices. Bois
ist theory of literary production. Their book,
seems convinced that he has isolated the fine
titled in its English translation The Formal
filament of pure theoretical formalism-the
Method zn Literary Scholarshzp(Cambridge and
internal dialogue ofform's definition of itself.
London, 1978), can be taken either as a
In the process he has transformed the richly
Marxist critique of formalism's limitations
heterogeneous field of modernism into a
(and hence a dismissal) or, as seems closer to
repressive, narrow, tunnel view. In what unithe case, as an attempt to engage formalism
verse do such beliefs-that
Adolph Gottlieb
with Marxism precisely because of the realizaor Clyfford Still (or the truly unmentionable
tion that it was only by combining the insights
figurative abstractionists Willem de Kooning,
into the specific qualities ofliterary/art pracLarry Rivers, and Grace Hartigan) should be

tice with an analysis of the role of art as a

cultural practice that the full efficacy of art
activity could be assessed. These splits within
formalist factions in the 1920s mapped tensions still evident in the field today: the
attention to the symbolic orders of discourse
as sites in themselves (Osip Brik, Shklovsky,
Bois) contrasting with a desire to see the
symbolic discourse as inextricably bound to
cultural practices (Medvedev, Bakhtin, and
in a contemporary frame, Victor Burgin, Irit
Rogoff, Amelia Jones, Francis Frascina-the
list goes on).
Bois's statement that his formalist method
is historical because it engages with "what
makes any given work of art possible at any
given time" is true only if one accepts a very
in
limited definition of cultural frame-one
which art's discursive structures are only metaphorically, rather than literally, engaged with
historical and cultural concerns. While understanding Cubist collage in Bois's terms as the
"issue of the status of signification in a world
where the illusions of unity condoned by the
episteme of representation are being dismantled" may be a necessaryaspect of reading
this work, it is not a sufficient one-since
the
world, in fact, is not in the work. It seems
essential to understand the ways in which the
work is zn the world as well. The conditions of
possibility are institutionally mediated; they
aren't embodied, autonomously, within the
delimited, formal boundaries of the object.
There are many aspects of artistic function
which can't be accommodated within Bois's
narrow practice of formalism. Raymond Williams's classic essay "The Future of Cultural
Studies," in The Politzcs of Modernism (London, 1989), contains a lucid account of a
countertradition of formalism, one which
served as a preliminary model for Cultural
Studies. Extending Williams's thoughtful work
into a contemporary frame must, of course,
take into account the changed conditions of
culture-late capitalism and its cultural manifestations, and the place/role/ site/effect of
visual art in these very different circumof which I think Bois would
stances-all
argue can be inferred from the changed
"episteme of representation." But how?
Which leads me to my final point: Bois's
remarks on the topic of Visual Studies. For
many art historians, the phantom of Visual
its even larger corollary field,
Studies-and
to be the present
Cultural Studies-seems
incarnation of all their fears about philistines
at the gate, of the desperate need to defend
the canon of fine art at all costs from possible
contamination. That Cultural Studies carries
with it an activist agenda from communities

1. Victor Erlich, Russzan Formalzsm, New Haven/

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

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LETTERS

of persons of color, women, and other minority groups is a not-inconsiderable aspect of its
identity-nor,
probably, of the grounds on
which fears within elite enclaves are produced. This is especially true when such work
challenges the old modernist and avantgarde 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 conventions to be destabilized in order to rework
relations between hegemony and representation. 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
that of exposing the hypocthreat-possibly
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 enterprise. Art historians concerned with the current 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 venues and their ongoing dialogue with contemporary art. The hard-and-fast distinctions so
essential to Greenberg's kitsch and Theodor
Adorno's culture-industry models no longer
if these concepts still function as
exist-even
cornerstones of outmoded defenses of supposedly avant-garde practices. Artists negotiate the terrain of popular culture with increasing 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 legitimacy has been long proved and accepted in a
broader critical community that I find disturbing. 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
into
their work.
insights
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 disappear 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 position so closed-minded and ungenerous toward the field of contemporary art and the
writers of its evolving history?
JOHANNA

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 showing: (1) that Greenberg was often idealist (as
ideologically generated meaning ["transcendence"] gets in the way of an adequate
account of formal procedures); (2) that Greenberg 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 formalism had been given a bad name in being
"collapsed with the proper name of Greenberg," 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

751

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DRUCKER

Department ofthe HzstoryofArt

Yale Unzverszty
New Haven, Conn. 06520

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