aracteristics of the medium; 'the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of pigment' (ibid). Greenberg states that such a process would render art 'pure', that is, autonomous, free of any extraneous elements deriving from other arts, such as theatricality or narrative. The impact of a painting should thus derive from those technical aspects characteristic of painting, such as colour, form and composition. An example of the sort of painting Greenberg was advocating at the time may clarify this. Morris Louis's painting Alpha-Phi (pl.D10) is exactly contemporary with the publication of 'Modernist Painting'. It consists of bold, ragged, diagonal streaks of pure colour against an off-white ground; Louis's use of acrylic paints, which soak into the canvas, means that the colours appear integrated with the ground and hence do not disrupt the flatness of the picture plane. Its effect depends upon the arrangement of colours and the large scale of the painting which makes it occupy 'so much of one's visual field that it loses its character as a discrete tactile object and thereby become that much more purely a picture, a strictly visual entity' (Greenberg, 'Louis and Noland', p.28). It is apparently devoid of references to anything other than the intrinsic qualities of forms and colours. Louis's painting, and the contemporary work of Kenneth Noland (e.g. Bloom, pl 141) and Jules Olitski (e.g. (Twice) Disarmed pl.D11) were seen by Greenberg as being how paintings should look if they are to continue 'the intelligible continuity of taste and tradition' (Art in Theory p.760) and offer the viewer 'a sufficient degree of aesthetic power' (Modernism in Dispute p. 173) in the 1960s. Burgin, however, sees Greenberg's approach and hence, by implication, paintings such as Alpha-Phi, as 'the terminal point of [an] historical trajectory'. It is arguable that paintings such as those of Louis represent a point beyond which art could not be furth...
