Archile Gorky's "Good hope road"

A detailed Summary of Archile Gorky's "Good hope road"

This paper will contain the critical points that were made by Clement Greenberg in his essay on Modernist Painting and elaborate on them as well compare them to the painting "Good Hope Road" by Arshile Gorky.

In his essay, Greenberg discusses his point of view on modernism. This is how he describes his theory: "I identify Modernism with the intensification, almost the exacerbation, of this self-critical tendency that began with the philosopher Kant." According to Greenberg, Philosopher Kant was the first one to criticize the criticism itself. He relates to Kant's philosophy because he sees Modernist art as art that criticizes itself from the inside. In other words Modernist art has the ability to criticize its own uniqueness. This technique makes Modernism even more unique, because due to the self-criticism, the Modernist art forbids itself the using of mediums or techniques that could resemble another art. Each modernist work has to be peculiar and different from others in order to stand out and bring out its uniqueness. At the same time Greenberg also mentioned that " I cannot insist enough that Modernism has never meant anything like a break with a past. It may mean a devolutio!

n, an unraveling of anterior tradition, bu

t it also means its continuation." Greenberg doesn't really has definitive idea on what modern art should look like but he does say that themes of modern art sometimes is expressed in such a way that it looses its literal character. Greenberg in my opinion states in his essay that Modernism is an inventive art. It explores different mediums, ideas, it reveals emotions that are never seen or spoken of. It experiments various combinations of mediums and images. Whether you understand what you see is less important in modernist art. It is important how you see it and the viewer's goal is to explore and understand the medium used the harmony and the distortion, the technique together with the artist. The goal of the Modernist art is to succeed to drive viewer's attention to the uniqueness and the independence of the work.

Greenberg said that modern artist had to be original in the representation of their work. And I believe that with "Good Hope Road" he definitely broke that barrier in being unique and gave way for modern artists that yet were to be established. He also established in his paintings that you can't look for something literal in the painting but you should consider the painting for what it is as whole as a composition. Gorky also gave continuity to his art based on his predecessors like Picass'o and Miro to build up his own unique crystal clea

Some common words found in the essay are:
Hope Road, Philosopher Kant, Betrothal II, Arshile Gorky, Picass'o Miro, modernist art, Modernist Painting, , Diary Seducer, Clement Greenberg, modern art, hope road, painting composition, arshile gorky, philosopher kant,

Approximate Word count = 920
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Arts