Material Thought recovers the legacy of ‘formalist’ art and theory of the mid-20th century, taking as its point of departure François Laruelle’s project of ‘non-standard aesthetics.’ Carrying out what Laruelle names a 'mutation' of formalism, recovering its radical scientificity whilst dismantling its reified façade, Jonathan Fardy operationalises a radical flattening of the division between making and thinking which he then applies to the work of select artists and critics: Clive Bell, Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, and Rosalind Krauss, as well as artists, including Helen Frankenthaler, Giulio Paolini, and Degas. Tending to works that both predate and postdate the high-water mark of formalist art and theory, he recovers and renews a theoretical impetus that proceeded the idealist tendency of 'high formalism' - i.e., the drive to incarnate a materialist aesthetics that took the materiality of art as its critical point of departure. Through his attention to what he calls this 'materialist-formalism,' Fardy restores to 20th-century formalism a vital theoretical and political significance that has been hitherto overshadowed by 'pure' formalism and its depoliticised abstractions.
