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art should continually move forward to improve itself by moving away from the use of imagery like that of the Renaissance. Instead Painting should move towards the two dimensional qualities of abstract painting. [4]

Greenberg described this change in perspective in the following statement:

Realistic naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations of the surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment were treated by the old masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Under modernism these same limitations came to be regarded as positive factors, and were acknowledged openly. [5]

By deliberately drawing attention to the natural flatness of the canvas in a work of art, the artists have created a new perspective for the viewer to look towards the painting. In modernist painting the viewer is not meant to appreciate the deception of anything but instead admire the act of painting itself. The artist is freely acknowledging the processes limitations of trying to apply visual depth to a two-dimensional surface. Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko began a serious pursuit for flatness in their painting, aiming to create an infinite space on the canvas using a flat layer of colour and shape.

Focusing on the images and content of a painting according to Greenberg was a negative factor, he believed for art to be pure and have clarity the subject matter must be thrown out and the emphasis should be put on the painting instead. ''Where as one tends to see what is in an old master before one sees the picture itself, one sees a modernist picture as a picture first.''(cite modernist painting) This he believed was the best way to see any kind of picture and that modernism imposed it as the only and necessary way.

Greenberg acknowledges in his essay 'Modernist Painting' that the art of sculpture is by its very nature a three-dimensional form. Painting However is applied to a two-dimensional surface, modernist artists were inspired by that attribute, so rather than attempting to disregard it they embraced it. (cite MP) The artist Ad Reinhart (b.1913-1967) sought to achieve the ultimate modernist painting that contained definitive purity and flatness on the canvas. He took this tendency towards abstraction and simplification in modern art to the extreme when he created his controversial ''black paintings'' during the last ten years of his life. The next chapter will discuss Reinhardt's definitions of painting and his belief that he had created the last painting. The chapter will also discuss the shift of painting from the limelight to background in art culture, as advances in technology and social interest change during the 1960s.

Chapter Two: The End of Painting?

Abstract painting No.5 (1962) is an example of the ‘’black’’ painting style which Reinhardt is best known for. The canvas appears to have a uniformly plain blue-black surface, an art piece devoid of colour and light. Seen up close however, the carefully painted layers reveal small amounts of blue, yellow and red. These colours form an underlying grid of different coloured squares, 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。