Medium specificity
Medium specificity is a consideration in aesthetics and art criticism
Contents
Description
According to Clement Greenberg, who helped popularize the term, medium specificity holds that "the unique and proper area of competence" for a form of art corresponds with the ability of an artist to manipulate those features that are "unique to the nature" of a particular medium.
For example, in painting, literal flatness and abstraction are emphasized rather than illusionism and figuration.
Medium specific can be seen to mean that "the artwork is constituted by the characteristic qualities of the raw material." This would probably include the techniques used to manipulate the materials.
History
As early as 1776 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing "contends that an artwork, in order to be successful, needs to adhere to the specific stylistic properties of its own medium."
It is most closely associated with (but predates) modernism.
See also
- Aesthetics
- Art
- Art criticism
- Classificatory disputes about art
- Clement Greenberg
- Medium (art)
- Modernism
External links
- Medium specificity @ Wikipedia
