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current idioms . At the Museum of Modern Art meanwhile , where
Kirk Varnedoe is chief curator of painting and sculpture, we can
speculate about a shift in policy already discernible in this long-time
enclave of modernism . In response to pressures to open up MOMA
to art of political protest and to a demographic spectrum of artists,
solo shows and group shows alike are reflecting a shift from aes–
thetic to sociological values. As is usually the case, this sociologically
"enlightened" art entails waffiing aesthetic quality.
For Greenberg, art history is not to be confused with current
events . It is rather a plot interpreting this sort of quotidian story, a
plot whose design enacts an advanced notion of visual structure . His
radical sense of modernism surely offers such a plot, yet it offers
more. The general lesson to be learned from his formalist approach
is that though art history may potentially take in all man-made
things , the plot - our interpretation of its history - must adhere to a
significant theoretical foundation . Greenberg's own position shows ,
furthermore, that under whatever cultural aegis we determine our
interpretation of history, there can be no aesthetic backsliding. As
color was to Matisse, the formalist avant-garde is to Greenberg: a
way of defining culture by its most advanced expression .
If
our soci–
ety is capable of only enfeebled, if well-intentioned, art, he main–
tains, then that's what all of us - not only critics - should be unafraid
to say .
MARJORIE WELISH
THE UNDISMEMBERED SELF
THE SELECTED LEITERS OF MARK VAN DOREN. Edited with
an introduction
by
George Hendrick. Louisiana State University Press.
$30.00.
A year before Lionel Trilling's death he told the
Columbia
Spectator
that "the teacher and friendship that meant most to me was
Mark Van Doren. His relationship to literature meant the most to
me .»Trilling is not alone in this view, but his reasons for it are worth
considering, and some of them are implicit in a well-known passage
from one of his essays on Wordsworth:
This failure to conceive the actuality of the life of common
