Whilst reading Leo Steinberg’s ‘Other Criteria’, he describes a key feature in modern art as the ‘flatbed picture plane’. This describes a horizontal pictorial surface, that even when it’s distorted through cubism or abstraction etc, it still has a set context to the up-right human figure. As Steinberg describes it “The top of the picture corresponds to where we hold our heads aloft; while its lower edge gravitates to where we place our feet.” (pg. 949.). He notes that Robert Rauschenberg changes this Modernist layout, to a ‘opaque flatbed’ (pg. 949.) horizon that revolutionized how art can be viewed today. Steinberg notes in his own words how Rauschenberg allowed us to see beyond the up-right human figure plane, and more into the philosophy behind the art itself.

In the second text, ‘Serra (b. 1939) from The Yale Lecture’ Serra talks about his interest in working with 3D heavy-duty materials and focusing on their innate properties. He looks upon the representation of certain types of processes, such as wielding, and notes how modern artists simply viewed them as a way of joining materials together, instead of it being part of journey towards the outcome. This throughout is emphasised as a key element to sculptures, and can be argued as a type of development in how we view art from the modernist period. As he puts it – “the evidence of the process can become part of the content” (pg. 1125).
With his passion lying in site-specific work, he notes how modernist artwork can only be judged in relation to works of its own medium, therefore limiting its correspondence. Site-specific work however, opens for new languages in which the art can be talked about, thus allowing a continuous dialog for each language to criticize and debate with the other. This keeps the art forever current.

When comparing the two texts, it becomes clear that both are referring to changes in how we create, view and understand art. This evidently spans back over the last century, featuring key modernistic viewpoints compared with post-modernistic viewpoints referencing when each article was published. They both highlight highly influential developments such as Rauschenberg’s ‘opaque flatbed’ and Serra’s site-specific work. These allow the reader to recognise how far the art world has revolutionised itself from the modernistic era, and also allow one to understand how contemporary art is influenced by such major developments today.