Abstract

This thesis explores the concept of the "surface gaze" as it appears and is developed in the works of two very different thinkers: French post-structuralist philosopher and historiographer of the human sciences Michel Foucault, and American modern art critic Clement Greenberg. The emphasis is placed on the shared epistemological determinants of the "medical gaze" as it is formulated by Foucault, and the "flat picture plane" as it is articulated by Greenberg. This will entail a thorough examination of the philosophical and, in the case of Greenberg especially, art historical traditions from which both emerge. Conclusions, supported by respective and comparative assessments of the intellectual legacies of each, are formulated from close readings of seminal texts, specifically Foucault's The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception (1963) and Greenberg's most influential writings on modern art, including "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" (1939) and "Modernist Painting" (1960)