The New School
Visual and Cultural Studies
What is the thesis of the social autonomy of art?
What claim does Greenberg make about the development of the artistic avant-garde in the 19th century? What central questions do Blake and Frascina raise in their response to Greenberg's claim? How do they propose to investigate this issue?
What, for Baudelaire, are the "contradictory conditions of modernity"? What is the role of art in modern life?
What do the authors mean when they say (on p. 57) that "All artists' productions are governed by consumption"? Is this true? Explain.
What point do the authors make in their thesis linking "eclectic individualism" to political, economic, and cultural phenomena?
What is "normalization" and what function does it serve in the social life of art?
What, according to Blake and Frascina, is the nature of Courbet's realism? In what sense is it "modern"?
In what sense did Courbet's work function as a political tool? How was it related to an avant-garde tradition?
How is Manet's "The Old Musician" linked to Baudelairian modernité? In what sense was Manet's work oppositional?
What role did "individualism" play in the development of modern art?
Reference is made on p. 110 to "the formal or technical qualities of new art as carriers of meaning". How does this work? Give an example.
How did the emerging art market capitalize on and reinforce the emerging individualism and diversity of the art scene?
How is modernism (with a small "m") distinguished from Modernism? How is Monet's work situated with respect to these two concepts?
What problems do the authors raise with regard to Modernism? Do you agree with their critique? Explain.
How is "worldly asceticism" related to Modernism?
How is Pissarro's landscape
painting an example of modernist and avant-gardist practice?
What dangers follow from neglecting the social aspects of art?
T. R. Quigley