Against Voluptuous Bodies

The aim of this book is to provide an account of modernist painting that follows on from the aesthetic theory of Theodor W. Adorno. It offers a materialist account of modernism with detailed discussions of modern aesthetics from Kant to Arthur Danto, Stanley Cavell, and Adorno. It discusses in detail competing accounts of modernism: Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, Yves-Alain Bois, and Theirry de Duve; and it discusses several painters and artists in detail: Pieter de Hooch, Jackson Pollack, Robert Ryman, Cindy Sherman, and Chaim Soutine. Its central thesis is that modernist painting exemplifies a form of rationality that is an alternative to the instrumental rationality of enlightened modernity. Modernist paintings exemplify how nature and the sociality of meaning can be reconciled.

J. M. Bernstein is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research.

List of Figures	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction: (Late) Modernism	1	(18)
1 Wax, Brick, and Bread—Apotheoses of Matter and Meaning in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy and Painting: Descartes and Pieter de Hooch	19	(27)
2 Judging Life: Kant, Clement Greenberg, and Chaim Soutine	46	(32)
3 Modernism as Philosophy: Stanley Cavell, Anthony Caro, and Chantal Akerman	78	(39)
4 Aporia of the Sensible—Art, Objecthood, and Anthropomorphism: Michael Fried, Frank Stella, and Minimalism	117	(27)
5 The Death of Sensuous Particulars: T.J. Clark and Abstract Expressionism	144	(21)
6 Social Signs, Natural Bodies: T.J. Clark and Jackson Pollock	165	(29)
7 Readymades, Monochromes, Etc.: Nominalism and the Paradox of Modernism (Thierry de Duve and Marcel Duchamp)	194	(29)
8 Freedom from Nature? Reflections on the End(s) of Art: Arthur Danto, Yves-Alain Bois, and Robert Ryman	223	(30)
9 The Horror of Nonidentity: Cindy Sherman's Tragic Modernism	253	(74)
Notes	327	(58)
Index	385

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Against Voluptuous Bodies

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