Modernist Painting - flattness

Greenebrg discussed the limitations of painting as a medium in much of his writing. It was the Old Masters who, according to him, struggled for centuries to break free from these limitations and create a depth of perspective in their work. Modern painters, however, have embraced such limitations. He wrote, "The enclosing shape of the picture was a limiting condition, or norm that was shared with the art of the theater; color was a norm and a means shared not only with the theater, but also with sculpture. Because flatness was the only condition painting shared with no other art, Modernist painting oriented itself to flatness as it did to nothing else." In other words, Greenberg pointed out that art of the theater or that of sculpture is, by their very nature, three-dimensional forms. Painting, however, is applied to a natural two-dimensional surface, and modern artists had begun to embrace that nature rather than trying to defy it.

Modern Art : The Story