In “The Crisis of the Easel Picture” (1948), Clement Greenberg compares the easel picture, disparagingly, to a box-like cavity cut into the wall. In this essay, I argue that late medieval panel paintings—which indeed often took the form of boxes—show Greenberg to be justified in making this comparison, if not in doing so disparagingly. But what Greenberg failed to fully acknowledge is that the easel picture had already long tried to escape this condition through the opening of the metaphor of the window. Failing to recognize this earlier effort to escape the material conditions of the box, many modernists and postmodernists, like Greenberg, attempting to move beyond the easel picture in the name of an art undivided from life, have unintentionally upheld the easel picture’s own escapist ideology.

中文翻译：

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图片作为盒子的简短历史

克莱门特·格林伯格（Clement Greenberg）在《画架的危机》（1948年）中毫不客气地将画架图片与切入墙壁的盒子状空腔进行了比较。在本文中，我认为，中世纪晚期的壁画（实际上经常采用盒子的形式）向格林伯格展示了进行这种比较的理由，即使不是贬低的话。但是格林伯格未能完全承认的是，画架图片早就试图通过打开窗户的隐喻来逃避这种情况。由于未能认识到早期为逃避盒子的物质条件所做的努力，格林伯格等许多现代主义者和后现代主义者试图以一种生活无与伦比的艺术的名义超越画架图片，无意间维护了画架图片自己的逃避现实主义意识形态。