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Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English. Grammar Thesaurus. The idea of purity reflects a denial, as much as possible, of media forms, for pure perception occurs intuitively , and immediately, without the interference or need for media. In the arts, however, fields invested in media, the concept of purity has played a different role. Unwilling or unable to dismiss all forms of mediation as inherently impure, art criticism has a history of attempting to define purity within a given medium.
The mixing which is to be avoided is not the mixing of intellect and corporeality but the mixing of different types of media into conglomerates that ignore their individual "pure" identities. In Lessing's Laocoon , the author attempts to demonstrate clear, qualitative differences and boundaries between painting and poetry, limits which, if strictly adhered to, would produce better more pure forms of both media types. Lessing, and art theorists after him, do not attempt to render the medium transparent or nonexistent, like Plato might have, but instead search for the defining characteristics of that medium.
Clement Greenberg and the abstract painters whom he championed also focused their efforts on achieving purity within the context of art media. They argued that, in fact, it is essentially concern with and a focus on the physical medium itself that produces pure art. Abstraction became a way that painters could distance themselves from subject matter, which emphasized the transparency of the visual medium and made it dependent and subservient to literature.
A focus on content, according to Greenberg meant that the unique physical properties of painting were ignored in order to tell a story or represent scenes, goals which should belong exclusively to literature.
Realist painting styles aimed for illusion--for a representation so convincing that a viewer would not realize that his sight experience was mediated. Painters rejected naturalism to work with shape, color and space, embracing the very physicality of the flat surface and painting techniques that emphasized form over content.
Greenberg wrote that in order for a painting to achieve separation from literature and purity of its own nature, it required an, "escape from ideas. Plato's pure Forms, concrete ideas of Truth, Beauty, Love, etc. The planar surface of the canvas, which representational painters had previously worked at virtually erasing through the use of perspective, became a dominant feature in much abstract art. The flatness of these works reflects Greenberg's ideals of purity as embodied by the medium.
Michael Fried also addressed questions of media purity. He objected to the minimalist school of art, whose works attempted to achieve the status of non-art, by exaggerating and embracing the materiality of the work, to the exclusion of anything else.
Thus the very focus on materiality in this extreme theory leads not to purity but to the antithesis of art and artistic purity, which is theater. Fried writes that, "what lies between the arts is theater. The avant-garde 's exploration of these ideas opens up the possibility for multiple types of purity--pure poetry, for example, is pure for different reasons than an abstract painting is considered pure.
Their theories call for an emphasis on lyricism and musicality in order to produce emotional and psychological effects; ideals which are very different from the physical, plastic ideals embraced by abstract painters.
Thus, in the differences between media, we can see the possibility for varying approaches to and examples of purity. Plato's conception of a single embodiment of purity--purity as an intellectual and spiritual construct--is dismissed in the interest of different media forms.
However, one inherent problem with purity is consistent in both Plato and later abstract artists. This is the question of value. For both theories of purity intra-media purity and anti-media purity operate on the assumption of positive values inherently linked with pure forms. Chepstow—did she really stand at the other? Unfortunately Massna's record was not such as to inspire confidence in the purity of his intentions.
In employing these heavy pressures of wind, increased purity and beauty of tone should alone be aimed at. But they all possess that essential purity and richness of tone without which there is no real excellence.
There are a few which possess both sweetness and purity , and they rank with the small Amatis. New Word List Word List. Save This Word! See synonyms for purity on Thesaurus.
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