According to Michael Fried. Artists and other thinkers

At the heart of modernism and post-modernism, we find a series of questions on the ontology of the work of art and the logic of the representation – i.e. the relationship of the work to the world, the artist and the reader or viewer. This talk examines the two dominant poles of this relationship by situating them in a history of art that is also a history of the capital. And, drawing on an interpretation of Mallarmé's ambitions put forward by Quentin Meillassoux, it examines the late photographs of Robert Frank and the work of the New York photographer Arthur Ou. Talk by Walter Benn Michaels, Professor of Literature, University of Illinois, Chicago.