zombie formalism
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: Zombie Formalism
Etymology: Coined by American painter and art critic Walter Robinson in 2014, see quotations.
Senses: examples: text: One thing I’m hearing these days, loud and clear, is the hum of an art style that I like to call Zombie Formalism. “Formalism” because this art involves a straightforward, reductive, essentialist method of making a painting (yes, I admit it, I’m hung up on painting), and “Zombie” because it brings back to life the discarded aesthetics of Clement Greenberg, the man who championed Jackson Pollock, Morris Louis, and Frank Stella’s “black paintings,” among other things.
ref: 2014 April 3, Walter Robinson, “Flipping and the Rise of Zombie Formalism”, in Artspace, archived from the original on 02 Oct 2015:
text: In his latest solo, Matt Connors strides right into the debate surrounding “zombie formalism,” or the reflexive rehashing of past modes of abstract painting.
ref: 2014 May 15, Karen Rosenberg, “Matt Connors: ‘Machines’”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
text: Most Zombie Formalism arrives in a vertical format, tailor-made for instant digital distribution and viewing via jpeg on portable devices. It looks pretty much the same in person as it does on iPhone, iPad, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram.
ref: 2014 June 17, Jerry Saltz, “Zombies on the Walls: Why Does So Much New Abstraction Look the Same?”, in New York Magazine:
text: Both paintings juxtapose their respective bits of text against the kind of paint-splattered background that has variously been called “crapstraction,” “zombie formalism” and, as Kass prefers, “citational modernism” — aesthetically unchallenging work that has saturated the art market in recent years.
ref: [2015 December 9, Alexandria Symonds, “Art as Social Critique — With a Little Help From the Rolling Stones and Katy Perry”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
text: Meanwhile, since the American artist and critic Walter Robinson coined the phrase “Zombie Formalism” for its resurrection in his infamous article “Flipping and the Rise of Zombie Formalism” for the online magazine Artspace in 2014, some members of the established international art world outside the globalized art market continue to bash abstraction fiercely.
ref: [2016, Isabel Wünsche, Wiebke Gronemeyer, editors, Practices of Abstract Art: Between Anarchism and Appropriation, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, →ISBN, page 286:
text: With the softening of the market, galleries have brought younger (and often better) artists to exhibit, and the recent vogue for “zombie formalism” – the painter/critic Walter Robinson’s phrase for braindead abstraction by affable bros – has been superseded by a more thoughtful, less cash-and-carry sort of art.
ref: 2016 March 4, Jason Farago, “The Armory Show review – a more thoughtful, less cash-and-carry art week”, in The Guardian, retrieved 20 Apr 2021:
text: Ms. Imhof’s main efforts are shiny acrylic monochromes (black, white or turquoise) on aluminum with impulsive flurries of scratches — variants of zombie formalism that imply vandalism.
ref: 2017 October 11, Holland Cotter, Roberta Smith, Will Heinrich, Jason Farago, “What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
text: So-called zombie formalism—rehashed abstract expressionism optimized for Instagram shareability—became a fad.
ref: 2025 May 5, Spencer Kornhaber, “Is This the Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture?”, in The Atlantic, →ISSN:
qualifier: painting
glosses: A form of abstract expressionism that gained popularity in the 2010s, seen as overly commercial and devoid of artistic innovation.