Formalism and formalisms: the Kantian formalism in Clement Greenberg’s art criticism

Abstract

• “Formalism" is a term that has long been present in the vocabulary of the most diverse areas of knowledge. In philosophical aesthetics, the authorship of the term has been attributed to Immanuel Kant and, since then, aesthetes and art theorists of the most diverse have been using the term to commonly designate, with distinct connotations, a specific way of analyzing and interpreting works of art. In the first half of the 20^th century, the American art critic Clement Greenberg became internationally known as a “formalist art critic”. In this sense, this paper proposes to investigate the way in which, in Kant and Greenberg, the elaboration of the concept of formalism occurs and understand the similarities and differences between the Kantian and the Greenbergnian formalist systems, always considering the question of the existence of a formalism or formalisms.