Description
Material Thought recovers the legacy of 'formalist' art and theory of the mid-20th century, taking as its point of departure François Laruelle's project of 'non-standard aesthetics.'
Carrying out what Laruelle names a 'mutation' of formalism, recovering its radical scientificity whilst dismantling its reified façade, Jonathan Fardy operationalises a radical flattening of the division between making and thinking which he then applies to the work of select artists and critics: Clive Bell, Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, and Rosalind Krauss, as well as artists, including Helen Frankenthaler, Giulio Paolini, and Degas. Tending to works that both predate and postdate the high-water mark of formalist art and theory, he recovers and renews a theoretical impetus that proceeded the idealist tendency of 'high formalism' - i.e., the drive to incarnate a materialist aesthetics that took the materiality of art as its critical point of departure.
Through his attention to what he calls this 'materialist-formalism,' Fardy restores to 20th-century formalism a vital theoretical and political significance that has been hitherto overshadowed by 'pure' formalism and its depoliticised abstractions.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. A Non-Standard Arsenal
2. Inhuman Aesthetics (Bell)
3. Scientific Flatness (Greenberg)
4. Philosopher, Historiographer, and Artist in Superposition (Fried)
5. Theory in the Expanded Field (Krauss)
Postscript
Bibliography
Index
Product details
| Published | 12 Nov 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 208 |
| ISBN | 9781350563315 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 10 bw illus |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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