I believe I came close to a spit take a few months ago when I read that Michael Fried had a new book out entitled Why Photography Matters as Never Before. Susan Sontag, I guessed, was rolling in her grave at that one, while a colleague to whom I told the news laughed and said something like, "He's such a little bitch." Searching through Amy Newman's oral history Challenging Art: Artforum, 1962 - 1974 for something, though, brought me to the quote below. Rosalind Krauss speaking:
"Radical," "unprecedented"--my feeling about that kind of hyperbole is that the two people whose very form of speech was hyperbole were Michael and Phil. I think it was partly the basis of their mutual recognition, a kind of badge worn by Jews from New York: if I got cheated, it was the worst cheat that ever happened; if I had a good time, it was unprecedented.
Sounds about right. Somehow I don't think I'll be getting to the new book.
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