Wolfe’s critique touches upon the social and economic forces dominating the mid-70s art world.
Why "better"? Why the insistence on the PDF format?
Rejected representational objects; focused on the flat canvas surface and "action painting".
If reading on a tablet or desktop, set your PDF reader to a two-page view to mimic the physical layout of the original book.
: Abstract Expressionists removed the third dimension, making art "really flat".
Wolfe's essay remains a powerful critique of the art world, and its themes continue to resonate today. Some of the key takeaways from "The Painted Word" include:
Wolfe argues that artists like Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Andy Warhol weren't just painting; they were illustrating the essays of critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. In Wolfe’s view, the painting became merely the "artifact" of the theory, making the written word (the "painted word") the true art form.
The champion of Abstract Expressionism who pushed the idea of "flatness" in painting.
Wolfe’s target is not just the art itself but the entire system that surrounds it: the artists, the dealers, the collectors, and above all, the critics. He argues that the art world had become a closed, insular cult where the true meaning of a work of art was no longer found on the canvas but in the dense theoretical texts that accompanied it. To be part of the "in crowd," one had to master the "elaborate, exotic, and extremely clever" theories of critics like Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, and Leo Steinberg.
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Despite the howls of outrage from the critical establishment, The Painted Word contains several observations that have proven remarkably durable:
