modern painting is continuous w/ traditional painting?

Art is a process or a product of arranged elements designed to appeal to the senses or emotions. In the essay called Modernist Painting by Clement Greenburg he uses the term modernist painting to describe what he called mainstream painting, which openly acknowledges its physical nature as a flat surface. He also uses the term traditional art which is a skill and knowledge that are passed down through generations from mater craftsman, craftsmen to apprentices. I agree when Greenburg claims that modern painting is continuous with traditional painting. He agues that “the limitations that constitute the medium of painting, the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment, were treated by the old masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only by implicitly or indirectly. Under Modernism these same limitations came to be regarded as positive factors and were acknowledge openly.” He explains with Manet, Kandinsky, and David. “Manet’s became the first Modernist pictures by virtue of the frankness with which they declared the flat surfaces on which they were painted.”
By the middle of the 19th century, all ambitious tendencies in painting had converged amid their differences, in an anti-sculptural direction. In traditional art, all recognizable entities exist in three-dimensional space. The fragmentary silhouette of a human figure or of a tea cup will do so and by doing so alienate pictorial space from the literal two-dimensional. Sculpture taught it in the beginning how to shade and model for the illusion of relief and even how to dispose that illusion in a complementary illusion of deep space. Greenburg he argues that modern art one is made aware of the flatness of their picture before, instead of after, they are made aware that the picture is flat. Whereas one tends to see what is in an Old Master before one sees the picture itself. I can agree with that because when looking at modern painting you first see the picture and then look deeper into it trying to piece the shapes and object together to make out what the artist wants you to see. On the other hand traditional art deals with more religious means. If one looks at a traditional art piece with can see everything depth, shading, light source, the figure, you don’t have to piece anything together because everything you need to know is in a three-dimensional space that can be recognized. What Greenburg is saying is that flatness is the only condition painting shared with no other art, Modernist painting oriented itself to flatness as it did to nothing else.
In conclusion, I agree with Greenburg when he claims modern painting is constant with traditional painting. Because even though both styles of painting are seen differently, traditional art is more detail and right on whereas modern take what traditional does and eliminates all the detail and shading so the only then seen is the light and dark or shape of an object. Edocuard Manet in Greenburg words became the first Modernist painter because he painted what the traditional painters were doing but distorted it in a way where the figure wasn’t in perfect detail. The way her dress was painted and her human figure, it was more like shapes put together. Wassily Kandinsky took it further is actually painted shapes and lines to create he painting. Jacques-Louis David was a traditional painter who tried to revive sculptural painting, it was, in part, to save pictorial art from the decorative flattening-out that the emphasis on color seemed to induce. The old Master created an illusion of space in depth that one could imagine oneself walking into, but the analogous illusion created by the modernist painter can only be seen into; can be traveled through, literally or figuratively, only with the eye.

BONUS QUESTION: modern painting demonstrate a belief in reason and progress an example Manet he understands the human figure and how to constructs a painting but he almost simplifies the figure. This can demonstrate progress because we are learning how to simply a figure to a shape. Another example Kandinsky he demonstrate emotions though lines and shapes. He expressed violent motion through profusion of sharp, jagged, and entangled lines. This could be seen and progress because instead of expressing yourself through your religion, you expressed you feelings in your own method.