PARTISAN REVIEW
383
maneuver was only partly successful. Words failed to fail him. He
ended by writing on his canvases.
• • • •
•
RE-DEFINITION
Pure An is no longer a black rectangle or an unpainted canvas. It is art
sold for a price so huge it strikes one blind and thus makes the paint–
ing itself invisible.
•
• • • •
MARXIST ANALYSIS OF MINIMALISM
In its most vital moments the middle class conceived its own tran–
scendence. Hence arose Superman, Socialism, avant-garde art.
But the professionals who now dominate middle-class society lack
the impulse
to
transcendence. In ethics, politics, art they recognize
only those elements that belong to the material reality of the subject,
that is, legality, power, paint and canvas.
• • • •
•
THE HUMAN INSTINCT
Disturbed children encouraged for therapeutic reasons to make
spontaneous drawings soon began copying painstakingly examples of
spontaneous drawings shown them by their teachers.
• • • • •
Chairman of the Museum Board of Directors: "Modernism is finished.
Call the cops!"
•
• • •
•
POST-MODERNISM
People speak of "post-modern." They have in mind not a more
advanced position than modernism, but on the contrary, a relaxation,
