Collected Writings

Michael Fried is a poet of the utmost integrity. – J. M. CoetzeeNo one sees paintings better than Michael Fried, or thinks as persistently or with such philosophical depth about such seeing, about the very possibility of pictorial meaning. – Robert B. PippinOne of the most powerful and influential critical minds of our time. – Michael CluneThroughout the 240 prose poems, the interviews and the essays, a singular voice emerges. In the prose poems especially, Fried’s recollections of a life in art express an intensity of commitment to art (and to friendships that often have art at their center) that, I would wager, is unparalleled in all the postwar years. Fried’s memories … Are lyrical, graceful, and quite beautiful. – Robert B. PippinEverything I know about art—how to look, how to think about what I see, and how to mine the relay between object and beholder—I learned from Michael Fried. It would be impossible to imagine the course of art-critical and art-historical thought in this century without [him]. – Patricia L. LewyPraise for Fried’s Essays:[Michael Fried was] responding to new painting and sculpture as if everything depended on it—as if sifting the bogus, the time-serving, the ‘shocking,’ the ‘contemporary’ from the actually difficult and beautiful was a calling. – T. J. Clark * Brooklyn Rail *Praise for Fried’s Poems: “Fried is [now] better than ever, bearing witness here, as always, to his luminous intelligence and imagination. He’s a great writer with a compelling literary personality.” — William E. Cain“Fried’s work is thought on the page.” — Alexander Nemerov“Like his writing on art, his poetry thrills through cadence, lyric, and the force of intention—an expressive valence as convincing as it is moving.” — Patricia L. Lewy“A remarkable book.” — Nicholas Delbanco * Brooklyn Rail *Praise for Fried’s Interviews: “[T]he essence of the basic argument is to describe a spark that jumped between his brilliantly impetuous thinking of 1967 and, to begin with at least, my own ambitions. … [N]othing remotely like it had been articulated before.” – Jeff Wall * Brooklyn Rail *

Michael Fried is Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of numerous scholarly works—most recently What Was Literary Impressionism?, Painting with Demons: The Art of Gerolamo Savoldo, and French Suite: A Book of Essays—and four volumes of poetry.