Following the shift of the artistic centre from Paris to New York in 1945, criticism also moved across the Atlantic, focusing on two key figures: Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried. Their more formal approaches differed from that of British critic T. J. Clark, who favoured a non-formalist method known as the social history of art. Nevertheless, they engaged in conversation and enriched the discourse around key notions such as ontology, flatness, theatricality and absorption.