art exemplified by modernism, made the work of art indistinguishable from one's general experience of the world. Minimalism (or "literalism" as Fried called it) offered an experience of "theatricality" or "presence" rather than "presentness" (a condition that required continual renewal). The essay inadvertently opened the door to establishing a theoretical basis for Minimalism as a movement based in a conflicting mode of phenomenological experience than the one offered by Fried. Discussing its upcoming publication in a 1967 letter to Philip Leider, editor of Artforum (which published the essay), Fried wrote: "I keep toying with the idea, crazy as it sounds, of having a section in this sculpture-theater essay on how corrupt sensibility is par excellence faggot sensibility." Absorption and Theatricality In "Art and Objecthood" Fried criticized the "theatricality" of Minimalist art. He introduced the opposing term "absorption" in his 1980 book, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Drawing on Diderot's criticism, Fried argues that whenever a self-consciousness of viewing exists, absorption is compromised, and theatricality results. As well as applying the distinction to 18th-century painting, Fried employs related categories in his art criticism of post-1945 American painting and sculpture. Fried rejects the effort by some critics to conflate his art-critical and art-historical writing. Fried revisits some of these concerns in a study of recent photography with Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before (London and New Haven 2008). In a reading of works by prominent art photographers of the last 20 years (Bernd and Hilla Becher, Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Demand among others) Fried asserts that concerns of anti-theatricality and absorption are central to the turn by recent photographers towards large-scale works "for the wall.". Selected bibliography In more recent years, Fried has written several long and complex histories of modern art, most famously on Édouard Manet, Gustave Courbet, Adolph Menzel, and painting in the late 18th century. Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Awarded 1980 Gottschalk Prize. Realism, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Awarded 1990 Charles C. Eldredge Prize. Courbet's Realism Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Manet's Modernism Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996. French translation awarded 2000 Prix Littéraire Etats-Unis. Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998.