How does the dialectic of autonomous art and critical avant-garde, as presented in the class lectures, play out in the work discussed in your textbook?
             In order to address this question, the terms have to be addressed first. Greenburg said that autonomous art is the independence of art from society, an idea that would necessitate the severing of all ties of the art and the artist from social, economical and historical contexts. To create this separation is an impossible task since we all exist in and are influenced by society, history and economics no matter how hard we try, but it is a goal that many strive for.
             For just as the attempt to devoid an artwork of society and politics, the very act is sociopolitical in nature¹ (Adorno) and further proves that the absence of an act, or idea is in itself an action. The idea extends to works such as Jackson Pollock¹s number 1 and Mark Rothko¹s number 7, both are very abstract paintings with very few ties to reality, essentially fields of color and design through which they attempt to sever all ties to social and political influences. Even in the names of these works, which are only numbers, suggesting an absence of ties to anything except perhaps a mathematical order. Trying to be autonomous is like trying to have no impact on the environment; you can get close, but you can never achieve your goal. Although the achieving of the goal of autonomous art in the purest is impossible, an artist like Jackson Pollock gets close with his drip paintings in the sense that they are complete unto themselves and the removal of any drip would make it it an!
             To be avant-garde is to cause a break with tradition and a subsequent change in the representational system, that is to say in the most general terms, something new that nobody had previously seen or thought of before. The idea of autonomy in art has some similarities to this idea of avant-garde, in that both ar
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