The historian and the art critic come together in Michael Fried, two activities and two types of discourse that mark the author's specific mood. Usually considered a "formalist critic", in the wake of Clement Greenberg, Fried is the author of some of the fundamental texts in modern art criticism, including Figure as Form: Frank Stella's Irregular Polygons (1966) and Art and Objectuality (1967). Both are collected here and the second gives the book its title. In addition, a set of articles on artists such as Noland, Caro, Morris Louis, Hofmann, Johns, etc., that is, the "big picture" of modern American painting, the one that, in the opinion of Greenberg and Fried himself, determines the space of modernity.