Autonomy and the Everyday: Beckett, Late Modernism and Post-War Visual Art

Abstract

Beckett's work has been important to several generations of post-war visual artists, and continues to figure strongly in contemporary work. Although this relationship has often been seen in terms of a shared minimalist aesthetic, the present essay argues that a more significant engagement emerges in the work of several artists who emerged alongside and in reaction to minimalist art in the late 1960s. These artists saw Beckett's work as departing from Clement Greenberg's late modernist notion of the autonomous artwork, emphasizing instead an openness to the body, popular new technologies and everyday life. It is this version of Beckett, rather than the minimalist one, that remains influential in today's art world.