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Formalism's Other HistoryAuthor(s): Johanna DruckerSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Dec., 1996), pp. 750-751Published by: College Art Association

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e t t e r s

Formalism's Other HistoryI found Yve-Alain Bois's defensive remarks insupport of his own particular brand of formal-ism ( Whose Formalism? Art Bulletin, LXXVII,no.1, 1996, 9-12) profoundly disturbing. Onewonders why Bois misrepresents the place offormalism and its role within contemporaryart history; why he does a disservice to thehistory of formalist-based critical practices;and why he makes an unsupported attack onVisual Studies.Bois begins by dismissing his many criticson the ground that they have not properlyunderstood his work and its formalist prem-ises. A discussion follows in which formalismis confined to the single lineage of ClementGreenberg, Rosalind Krauss, and (oddly,given his pluralistic, social-history approach)Timothy J. Clark. This exclusive narrowing ofthe field seems to serve only one purpose: toinvalidate any work which does not follow hisown party line. But in any field of study ofclassic or contemporary art, isn't there roomand need for a range of arguments? Whydenigrate the archival work of Patricia Leigh-ton (though unnamed, she is obviously beingreferred to as one [who] speaks of Picasso'sCubist papiers colles in relation to thisartist's highly improbable interest in the Bal-kan war )? Or that of Serge Guilbaut andMichael Leja, and a host of others-as inBois's invective against the study of postwarAmerican painting in any analysis of itsmarket and institutions. Though Bois maynot have use for such material, does hisformalism have to be defended at the ex-pense of the value of such work? Leja'sdiscussion of the Modern Man myth hasbroadened our understanding of the ways inwhich specific art-historical practices inter-sect with contemporary definitions of human-ism and its discontents to at least as great adegree as Krauss's questioning of the auto-graphic trace in the evidently physical, ges-tural, authorially expressive work of Pollock'slarge drip paintings. Is it really formalism ormethodology which is at stake here? Bois'sclosed circuit of references evidences increas-ing intolerance of oppositional voices. Boisseems convinced that he has isolated the finefilament of pure theoretical formalism-theinternal dialogue ofform's definition of itself.In the process he has transformed the richlyheterogeneous field of modernism into arepressive, narrow, tunnel view. In what uni-verse do such beliefs-that Adolph Gottliebor Clyfford Still (or the truly unmentionablefigurative abstractionists Willem de Kooning,Larry Rivers, and Grace Hartigan) should be

eliminated from consideration-pass as cred-ible scholarly positions? Does Bois believethat the relations of form to the specific socialinstitutions, historical circumstances, and cul-tural practices in which their signification isproduced have no relation to the signifyingfunctions themselves? If Bois believes that hehas isolated the pure Idea of modern formas form, doesn't that contradict his own anti-idealist arguments?Collapsing the term formalism with theproper name of Greenberg, or even withGreenberg's own varied positions, is of coursea historical distortion, as Bois well knows-though it serves his purpose of validating hisparticular late 20th-century art-historical ap-proach. Formalist methodology originated inthe mid-1910s with Russian critics' efforts toisolate their understanding of poetic formand language from historical linguistics andthe methods of the late 19th-century NewGrammarians. But from the outset, its practi-tioners in the Moscow Linguistics Circle andthe St. Petersburg Opajaz group struggled toremain self-conscious about the historicalaspects of their own work (that method had ahistory, and that historical circumstances hadlimiting and defining effects on the possibili-ties and transformations of enduring poeticand prose forms). The difficult problem ofthe relation between form and ideology, lan-guage and culture, art and politics in everysense of the word was actively debated. Forinstance, Viktor Shklovsky and VladimirMayakovsky (who was involved in the debatesof the Moscow Linguistic Circle) took starklyopposite views. Shklovsky argued for the ideathat art was always free of life, that it wasan independent system, and that formal-ism's primary concern was to understandliterature (and literariness ) through theinseparability of form and meaning. ' Maya-kovsky took the position that there should bean attempt to understand and theorize (aswell as engage with) the interconnections ofthis approach to art with the cultural sphereof lived social life. By the 1920s this convic-tion had become so strong among one groupof theorists, particularly Pavel Medvedev andMikhail Bakhtin, that they formulated a Marx-ist theory of literary production. Their book,titled in its English translation The FormalMethodzn LiteraryScholarshzp Cambridge andLondon, 1978), can be taken either as aMarxist critique of formalism's limitations(and hence a dismissal) or, as seems closer tothe case, as an attempt to engage formalismwith Marxism precisely because of the realiza-tion that it was only by combining the insightsinto the specific qualities ofliterary/art prac-

tice with an analysis of the role of art as acultural practice that the full efficacy of artactivity could be assessed. These splits withinformalist factions in the 1920s mapped ten-sions still evident in the field today: theattention to the symbolic orders of discourseas sites in themselves (Osip Brik, Shklovsky,Bois) contrasting with a desire to see thesymbolic discourse as inextricably bound tocultural practices (Medvedev, Bakhtin, andin a contemporary frame, Victor Burgin, IritRogoff, Amelia Jones, Francis Frascina-thelist goes on).Bois's statement that his formalist methodis historical because it engages with whatmakes any given work of art possible at anygiven time is true only if one accepts a verylimited definition of cultural frame-one inwhich art's discursive structures are only meta-phorically, rather than literally, engaged withhistorical and cultural concerns. While under-standing Cubist collage in Bois's terms as theissue of the status of signification in a worldwhere the illusions of unity condoned by theepisteme of representation are being dis-mantled may be a necessaryaspect of readingthis work, it is not a sufficientone-since theworld, in fact, is not in the work. It seemsessential to understand the ways in which thework is zn the world as well. The conditions ofpossibility are institutionally mediated; theyaren't embodied, autonomously, within thedelimited, formal boundaries of the object.There are many aspects of artistic functionwhich can't be accommodated within Bois'snarrow practice of formalism. Raymond Wil-liams's classic essay The Future of CulturalStudies, in The Politzcs of Modernism (Lon-don, 1989), contains a lucid account of acountertradition of formalism, one whichserved as a preliminary model for CulturalStudies. Extending Williams's thoughtful workinto a contemporary frame must, of course,take into account the changed conditions ofculture-late capitalism and its cultural mani-festations, and the place/role/ site/effect ofvisual art in these very different circum-stances-all of which I think Bois wouldargue can be inferred from the changedepisteme of representation. But how?Which leads me to my final point: Bois'sremarks on the topic of Visual Studies. Formany art historians, the phantom of VisualStudies-and its even larger corollary field,Cultural Studies-seems to be the presentincarnation of all their fears about philistinesat the gate, of the desperate need to defendthe canon of fine art at all costs from possiblecontamination. That Cultural Studies carrieswith it an activist agenda from communities

1. Victor Erlich, Russzan Formalzsm,New Haven/London, 1965, 66-69, 112-17.

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LETTERS 751of persons of color, women, and other minor-ity groups is a not-inconsiderable aspect of itsidentity-nor, probably, of the grounds onwhich fears within elite enclaves are pro-duced. This is especially true when such workchallenges the old modernist and avant-garde ideas that form carries ideologicalvalue (or that representation is an adequatesite of political engagement). It may (but alsomay not) be necessary for normative conven-tions to be destabilized in order to reworkrelations between hegemony and representa-tion. But that a rhetoric of politics is hardlyany politics at all seems not yet to haveoccurred to those for whom the pointedcritiques of Cultural Studies pose such athreat-possibly that of exposing the hypoc-risy of those very scholars who took up themantle of the old avant-garde and its rubricsonly to make it a repressive and elitist enter-prise. Art historians concerned with the cur-rent status of the fine-art image have much togain from recognizing the ways in whichcontemporary art practices are circumscribedby the domains examined within CulturalStudies. The image-saturated environmentin which fine art continues to have an identityrequires a theoretical understanding of thedistinctions between images produced in massmedia, entertainment, and commercial ven-ues and their ongoing dialogue with contem-porary art. The hard-and-fast distinctions soessential to Greenberg's kitsch and TheodorAdorno's culture-industry models no longerexist-even if these concepts still function ascornerstones of outmoded defenses of sup-posedly avant-garde practices. Artists negoti-ate the terrain of popular culture with increas-ing interest and facility. Art historians can(and do) too, and to the mutual benefit offine arts and critical theory. Again, it is thedefensive tone, the blanket dismissal, of fieldsof inquiry whose intellectual and critical legiti-macy has been long proved and accepted in abroader critical community that I find disturb-ing. It seems to return art' historians to anexclusionary and elitist domain, as if onlyMondrian, Matisse, Pollock, and a handful ofother artists were of interest, and only aneven tinier number of critics producing validor useful insights into their work.While I have sometimes found ProfessorBois's writing useful, and certainly appreciateits creativity and rigor, his work, like that ofall the rest of us, represents only one highlylimited perspective in a very broad field. If allthe work on contemporary art were to disap-pear save his and that of the writers hesanctions, then our knowledge of and insightinto this field would be smaller than thepeephole in Duchamp's Etant donnis. Andwhat we would be allowed to look at might bea lot less interesting. Why is someone in soprivileged and important an academic posi-tion so closed-minded and ungenerous to-ward the field of contemporary art and thewriters of its evolving history?

JOHANNA DRUCKERDepartment ofthe HzstoryofArtYale Unzverszty

New Haven, Conn. 06520

ResponseI have some difficulty tracking down theunsupported attack and invective thatProfessor Drucker seems to have read intomy essay. My effort was merely to prizeformalism away from Greenberg by show-ing: (1) that Greenberg was often idealist (asideologically generated meaning [ transcen-dence ] gets in the way of an adequateaccount of formal procedures); (2) that Green-berg was frequently incapable of an accurateattention to materials; and (3) that because ofboth of the above, Greenberg was oftenunable to deal with the historical specificity ofa given artist's choices. In other words, Iwanted nothing else than to hint that formal-ism had been given a bad name in beingcollapsed with the proper name of Green-berg, thus that it should be reconsidered,and that other models of formalism, far moreattentive to the mediated relationship of thework of art with its sociopolitical context,were available.

YVE-ALAIN BOISDepartment of Fine ArtsHarvard UniversztyCambrzdge,Mass. 02138

Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation(Required by 39 U.S.C. 3685). Title of publication: TheArtBulletin. Publication no.: 032-620. Date of filing: September30, 1996 Frequency of issue quarterly No. of issues pub-lished annually 4. Annual subscription price: $25 00-$145.00 Complete mailing address of known office of publi-cation 275 Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10001-6797Complete malhng address of the headquarters of generalbusiness office of the publisher: 275 Seventh Ave., New York,NY 10001-6797 Publisher College Art Association, 275Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10001-6797. Editor Nancy J.Troy, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10001-6797.Managing editor Virginia Wageman, CAA, 275 Seventh Ave,5th floor, New York, NY 10001-6797. Owner: College ArtAssociation, 275 Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10001-6797Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holdersowning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount ofbonds, mortgages, or other securities none The purpose,function, and nonprofit status of this organization and theexempt status for federal income-tax purposes have notchanged during the preceding 12 months. Extent and natureof circulation: A Total no copies. Average no. copies eachissue dunng preceding 12 months, 9,375 Actual no copies ofsingle issue published nearest to filing date, 9,500. B. Paidand/or requested circulation 1 Sales through dealers andcarners, street vendors, and counter sales Average no copieseach issue dunng preceding 12 months, 0 Actual no. copiesof single issue published nearest to filing date, 0 2. Mailsubscriptions Average no. copies each issue dunng preceding12 months, 8,852 Actual no copies of single issue publishednearest to filing date, 9,178 C. Total paid and/or requestedcirculation. Average no. copies each issue during preceding12 months, 8,852 Actual no copies of single issue publishednearest to filing date, 9,178 D. Free distribution by mail(samples, complimentary, and other free). Average no copieseach issue during preceding 12 months, 15 Actual no copiesof single issue published nearest to filing date, 10. E. Freedistribution outside the mail. Average no. copies each issueduring preceding 12 months, 0 Actual no. copies of singleissue published nearest to filing date, 0 F. Total free distribu-tLon Average no copies each issue dunng preceding 12months, 15. Actual no copies of single issue published nearestto filing date, 10. G. Total distribution. Average no. copieseach issue during preceding 12 months, 8,867. Actual no.copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 9,188H. Copies not distributed I Office use, left over, spoiled.Average no copies each issue dunng preceding 12 months,508 Actual no copies of single issue published nearest tofihing date, 312. 2 Return from news agents Average nocopies each issue dunng preceding 12 months, 0. Actual nocopies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 0 ITotal Average no copies each issue dunng preceding 12months, 9,375 Actual no copies of single issue publishednearest to filing date, 9,500 I certify that the statements madeby me above are correct and complete JeffreyLarrzs,DeputyDzrector.

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