Because of this, painting has had to constantly redefine itself, re-negotiating it’s terms of existence, as new understandings of what art is materialism from our collective consciousness. When the death of painting was discussed in the sass, there was a belief that all combinations had been tried. Douglas Crimp, whose ruminations on the end of painting expressed the feeling of the time, cites the ‘black paintings’ of Ad Reinhardt (“the last paintings anyone can make’), the monotone and white paintings of Robert Raman and the mechanical, striped paintings of Daniel Burden as evidence that painting ad reached the end of the road.
Crimp states “It is but a matter of time before painting Will be seen for the pure idiocy that it is” (Overwrote, n. D. ). Robert Raman became well known in spite of his unconventional approach to painting. Although his critics tried to fit his work into a variety Of categories, including minimalism, anti-form, process or conceptuality, they eventually admitted that none could be accurately applied to his art. He disagrees that his work is abstract, saying “l don’t abstract from anything.
My work is involved with real visual aspects of what you really are looking at, whether it’s wood, or you see the mint, and the metal, and how it’s put together and how it works with the wall and how it works with the light” (Adams, 2012), Robert Raman, Versions l, 1932, (detail) Raman, Orange Painting 1955-1959 Robert Ad Reinhardt ‘Abstract Painting’ appears to be completely black, however upon closer inspection one begins to see that it is composed Of an almost imperceptible grid of nine squares, individualized by subtle variations in color.
Closer examination reveals red hues in the squares at its corners, blue hues at the top and bottom of the vertical centre, and suggestions of green across its rational centre. Ad Reinhardt, ‘Abstract Painting’, 1963, Daniel Burden has been classified as an abstract minimalist and is best known tort using regular, contrasting colored stripes in order to integrate the painted surface with the architecture of historical or landmark buildings and structures.
Daniel Burden, IF orange, 1992 Daniel Burden, Sans tire 7, 2005 His main concern is the ‘scene of production’, a way of presenting art and highlighting the process of making, thereby removing representation of anything and focusing entirely on the work itself. The work is site-specific installation and contains a context relevant to its setting, thereby removing the work’s autonomy. Art critic Roseland Krause attributes modern art’s down-turn to Decamp and his ready-made.
With Duchess’s “Fountain’, conceptual art became the idea Of art as pure idea and lost touch With the medium. Painting and sculpture gave way to installation art which was full of ideas but void of technique, becoming an easy target for mainstream ridicule. Krause was drawn to the criticism of Clement Greenberg. Whose way of assessing how an art object works became a personal resource for her.
She and fellow “Greenberg” Michael Fried would later break with the critic and with each other at various points in time, yet the commitment to formal analysis as the basis of serious criticism would remain for both of them. Decades after her first engagement with Greenberg Krause still used his ideas about an artwork’s medium as the means by which 5 he came to terms with post- art (Wolf, n. D,). Michael Fried states, “In some ways was virtually apprenticed to (Clement Greenberg). Sought him out when was 19, and was reading him from my teens on. Coked at a lot of art with him. He had a great eye. He’s arguably the foremost art critic of the 20th century, and I learned a tremendous amount,” While poetry and English literature were Fried’s intended studies at Princeton, it was the writings of critic Clement Greenberg in Art News that drew Pried into the world of art and art criticism (Wolf, n. D. ). Vanessa Bisector’s performances have been described as art, fashion, brilliant, terrible, evocative, provocative, disturbing, sexist, and empowering. They are also an excellent example of ‘Conceptual Painting.
The primary material in her work is the live female figure, which remains ephemeral, ND separate. These women who are often naked, somewhat androgynous, yet unified through details like hair color or identical shoes, stand motionless, unapproachable, in the space they share with the viewers who watch them. Neither performance nor documentary, Bisector’s live events are recorded through photography and film, but her conceptual approach is actually closer to painting as she creates contemporary versions Of historical, figurative compositions.
Bisector’s more recent work has a more theatrical approach. At the 52nd Venice Biennial, Vanessa Objector staged one of her most politically aversive performances, ‘VIBE Still Death! Darker Still Deaf? ‘ (2007). This involved approximately thirty Sudanese women lying face-down on a white canvas on the ground, simulating dead bodies piled on top of one another, representing the genocide occurring in Darker, Sudan (Objector, 2007). Vanessa Objector, VIBE , Still Death! Darker Still Dean (2007) Though painting has survived, the critics seem determined to analyses it endlessly. 15 painting dead? ‘ is a question that has been asked for nearly a century, yet still the critics remain divided on what the use or meaning of minting might be, and the level of importance painting holds in society. Gerhard Richter is conscious of his connection to the art historical tradition of painting, but he also states that there is a gap separating him from the traditions of the past (Beans, 2011). This simultaneous connection and disconnection leads him to constantly question painting as a medium and as a practice. What are its capacities and limits?
What are its private and public roles? What is paintings relationship to photography? Through this constant questioning Richter has pushed the boundaries of painting far beyond what we might have thought Seibel, and continues to do so. Gerhard Erecter’s studio in Cologne showing work from the Cage series in progress (2006) Gerhard Richter, Trip-Star, 1981 Diameter 17. 5 CM. Enamel on phonograph record In the summer of 1978 Richter took photographs tooth surface of an oil sketch. The photographs were taken from various sides, angles and distances under differing light conditions.
The resulting 128 photographs were organized pictorially in grid form. This work highlighted his interest in the relationship between painting and photography in which he crosses the two media, and by so owing exposes the limitations of photographic representation (Beans, 20111 Gerhard Richter, 128 Details from a Picture (Halifax 1978) II, 1998, offset prints At the beginning of the 20th Century abstract painters thought the real world could be changed for the better with a few colored squares painted in bright pictures for workers houses, to help celebrate their newfound post-industrial revolution rights.
The Great Depression and World War II proved them Wrong, and they switched to existentialism, then a modern philosophy stressing the importance Of personal experience and responsibility in a seemingly meaningless universe, painting for the pure freedom of it. For a couple of generations thereafter, abstract painting was either an expressionistic out-pouring Of angst or conceptualized minimalism. In the mid-sass painting was no longer revolutionary, visionary or even sincere. Along with just about everything else in the art world, it became ironic.
It would appear that irony is much better accomplished by collage, assemblage, installation art, printmaking and photography, while abstract painting deals more with aesthetic beauty, color and personal expression ” (Overwrote, n. D. ). Belgian artist Luck Tammany is often credited with having contributed to the revival of painting in the sass. His sparsely colored figurative works are typically painted from imagery which includes personal memories, photographs, and T. V or video stills. His canvases become abstractions of reality and can sometimes appear slightly out of focus, as if painted from a failing memory.
There is also a darker side to what appear to be innocuous subjects. Tammany has explored diverse and sensitive topics including the Holocaust, images from 9/1 1, the ambiguity of the Disney empire, the colonial history of his native Belgium, and the rise Of multi-national corporations (Grinner, RL_d. ). Luck Tammany, TV Set, 1999, Oil on canvas One of Luck Tammany’ early influences was the 16th century artist known as II Greece, Who he believed painted in such a way as to confront the viewer and then disappear, a kind of retraction, and he felt there was an element of deconstruction present in the artist’s work.
This could also be seen as a fairly accurate description of Tammany’ paintings, which show a reluctance to portray human images. It’s not that they don’t exist: they do: however they are often faced, partially erased or somehow deprived of identity. “El Greece, it is assumed, was a very tall, thin character with a long head. There is a resemblance between his paintings and his being, You always project your own physicality upon the image. ” (Lock, Alicia& Specter, 1996, p. 13).
Tammany’ narratives are over-shadowed by a mood specific to each painting, and he uses deletion rather than inclusion to encourage the viewer to complete the image themselves, referring to these deliberate ‘suspensions of visual logic’ as ‘points of entry’ into his paintings (Lock, Alicia & Specter, 1996, p. 97). Rather than offering a clear narrative, Tammany compels the viewer to use their own experience to make sense of the scarce imagery he provides, which has, by their own admission, left some viewers feeling uneasy (Mooney, 2008).
Clement Greenberg summed up contemporary painting accurately when he stated the following: The essence of Modernism lies in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself ? not in order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in it’s area of competence. Modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations that constitute the tedium of painting- the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties Of pigment – were treated by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly.
Modernist painting has come to regard these same limitations as positive factors that are to be acknowledged openly (Klein, 2005, p. 822). Whether its conceptual art that uses paint as it’s medium, conceptual painting which uses no paint at all, or the seemingly unfinished paintings of Luck Tammany’ which invite the viewer to complete the narrative themselves, there can be no bout that painting is very much alive and well.
Some forms of painting may be unrecognizable compared to those practiced one hundred years ago or more, but as history has proved repeatedly, painting has and will always adapt itself to the shifting consciousness of humanity. It will continue to integrate and reconfigure itself to stand alongside the myriad media and conceptual possibilities, as painting is the foundation of visual language since Paleolithic man first began drawing on cave walls with charcoal and dust more than 15,000 years ago. Reference List Adams, D. (2012). Robert Raman – White paint, not white paintings.
