Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art. - Clement Greenberg

* the dividing line between the painterly and the linear [painting] is by no means a hard and fast one.

The essence of modernism lies in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence. Modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations that constitute the medium of painting - the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment - came to be regarded as positive factors, and were acknowledged openly.

Complete honesty has nothing to do with "purity" or naivety. The full truth is unattainable to naivety, and the completely honest artist is not pure in heart.