Vaghezze e stravaganze para-letterarie nella critica d’arte anglo-americana. L’art-writing nel secondo Novecento da strategia retorica a genere autonomo

Abstract

Vagueness and para-literary extravagance in the Anglo-American art criticism. Art-writing in the second half of the twentieth century from a rhetorical strategy to an autonomous genre · The essay offers an analysis of the transformations that occurred due to the dynamic artistic debate in the United States in the second half of the 20th century, when art-writing and art criticism were constantly subject to redefinition with regard to an object – the artwork – which was gradually becoming undetermined. Retracing the evolution of the reflections on art criticism, the paper shows how it progressively tended towards a form of autonomous narrative taking the steps from art – employing vagueness as a genre rather than as a rhetorical means – such that criticism was validated in itself, instead of being related to the artworks and artists it dealt with. The essay examines several examples of Anglo-Amer- ican criticism addressing the issue of art-writing, starting from the confrontation between Goef- frey Wagner, Clement Greenberg, and Harold Rosenberg on the pages of «The Antioch Review» in 1954 – centered on the topic of how it should be licit or preferable to write about art. Eventually the analysis takes the so-called second generation of us critics under scrutiny – Robert Storr, Michale Fried, and Rosalind Krauss amongst others – with regard to the suffocating legacy of Greenberg and Rosenberg.