Thursday, January 12, 2006
Is it ok to admit I don't like a whole lot of painting???
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Let me start by saying this is not a bash on painting. A popular question over the past 10 years has been 'is painting dead?'. A question that I believe has been answered over and over, but as I've always said, 'painting is not dead, it just has more competition."
As I sit here this evening, wine in one hand, cigarette in the other, Seinfeld on the tv, I look around my luscious 575 s.f. abode and see a couple of major (in size only, not by Sotheby's standards) photographs, an autographed can of evaporated milk, a pack of smokes wrapped in plexi, light from my kitchen duplicating some sunset in New Mexico, a nursery rhyme telling young males they shouldn't masterbate, an audio piece repeating 'Get yo' feet off my bench', AND a tiny oil portrait of myself by an a talented artist in California that refuses to go to grad school.
I just started to wonder, why don't I have more paintings? Price is an issue, but price was an issue when I just bought the two videos in South Beach. I'm not a painter, and can't begin to understand it's intricacies, but I want to learn. When painting starts out conceptually, I get it and I sometimes love it. Think Tim Gardner. But I think I need help, a lot of help, with the artist pictured above. I need help with the Germans. And Lord knows, I need help with so much else.
I also need a few volunteers. I need a lover of painting to take me through Indy this week and show me why they love painting. I need a lover of painting to take me through Chicago next month and show me why they love painting. And in March, I need a lover of painting to take me through New York and show me why they love painting. These blogs seem to be dominated by painters, and I can't promise my next purchase will be a painting, but will somebody please help me???
17 Responses to “Is it ok to admit I don't like a whole lot of painting???”
January 13, 2006 at 1:54 AM
Christopher,
I would not have guessed you to maintain art biases!
Oh, and thanks for getting me addicted to art blogs!
Lindsey (former intern)
January 13, 2006 at 3:23 AM
I knew this day would one day come my friend. So, i hereby volunteer my time to show you why i am into painting. I can't make New York but we could surely go to the IMA and/or Chicago to school you on some of it. The Germans, i do like those Germans.
January 13, 2006 at 8:01 AM
Yes Scott, let's hit the IMA soon. Thank you.
January 13, 2006 at 11:27 AM
The death of painting has been proclaimed for forty years, at least, not ten. It's just something jejune some people like to do in order to declare absolutes. Sometimes I think it is just that painting is the medium singled out to discuss the arts and their place in our culture.
Painting is the most expressive, elastic, visceral art. Gooey liquids can become anything. Paint may depict, it may express, it may abstract. It may do any and all of these at once. It may appear wet or dry, loose or tight, rough or smooth. The physicality of paint is one of its most alive and engaging characteristics.
The simplicity and directness of painting, traditionally a shape of canvas or board usually hanging on a vertical surface (wall) belies the complicated experience of a painting. Painting is a silent challenge no matter how beguiling its surface or image, no matter how innocuous its presentation. Your experience, intellect and perception directly confront that of another, the painter. But there's more: painting, like people, may contain contradiction and confusion, as well as any range of emotions. At the same time it states an individual view of the world. This may be the physical, social, cultural or intellectual world. Mostly, when painting is good, it tell us something about all of these aspects of living. It tells us about an actual experience of being alive at a specific time and place.
In order to understand this the viewer actively and imaginatively engages with the painting. It is not a passive experience. You bring nada, you take away nada.
Painting carries on an additional dialogue. The dialogue with all painting created before it. That requires a viewer with some education and lots of experience to perceive.
Ultimately, the thrill of painting does not lay in recognition or understanding. It resides in the religio-magic roots of painting which are as potent today to us as they were in the caves of Lauscaux to our ancestors. Wish fulfillment? Conjure? Instruction? Explanation? Either way, imagination is the very foundation of taking a tool and some viscous liquid to make a window on a world.
That imagination is cured in a furnace of ability and desire. Skill borne forth via technique. Maybe only other painters are interested in the "how die he/she do it" question. Anyway, it comes last for the viewer, if at all, but is inextricably part of the painters view.
Then there is a purley formalist perspective. This is an entirely abstract approach to the appreciation of painting. I leave you to learn about that on your own.
Locally, we have some thrilling painters: Brian Fick, Carla Knopp, Steve Paddack, Ed Sanders, Becky Wislon, Marc Jacobson. Maybe you could schedule studio visits with these painters. You could see a greater breadth of their work than would be available to you in a single exhibit.
January 13, 2006 at 12:09 PM
Might i say Anonymous, that is one hell of a great answer! Thanks.
January 13, 2006 at 6:37 PM
Can someone translate the last comment for me! I paint and purchase paintings for beauty. Beauty is what moves me.
January 13, 2006 at 8:39 PM
Formalism is well, formalism. The examination and valuation of art via formalist characteristics. Like compositional elements, line, foerground, background, etc. I don't know that a subject of such limitations is up for grabs. Beauty itself has been in disregard for half of the last century.
Also, my attempt was to present aspects of painting to someone who (as expressed) might not have a penchant for it. I in no way attempted to offer a complete summation of painting in my few paragrphs.
I can hardly understand why the numbers of people painting or not painting may have anything to do with the relevance of painting per se.
Yes, statement vs. view - isn't that just so much rhetoric. I do see your point. I just think statement doesn't necessarily mean certainty. Its the fudging, you know.
January 13, 2006 at 10:06 PM
Imo, innovation isn't all it's cracked up to be. I find art made solely for the sake of being different/new as boring. Perhaps the "problem", if there is one, is because (as someone said) beauty has been in disregard for the last half century? We have different opinions I guess. I like the Precious!
January 14, 2006 at 2:49 AM
here here. new for the sake of being new has been the standard since before I was even born. innovative and beautiful is wonderful, but just plain beautiful trumps innovation nine times out of ten.
January 14, 2006 at 5:18 AM
Keep in mind I'm an art simpleton....
It's my opinion that the artistry of painting isn't dying... it's just decaying... much like the opera. It's a medium that fewer people like, understand, or appreciate.
January 14, 2006 at 1:34 PM
Gben: as for formalism, I thought that in context of what I wrote it was apparent that I was refering to formalism as a way to view and critique art not to any art school or movement. The father of Art History, Winkelmann, was a formalist and professed formalism as a way to understand art.
The beauty question: just because someone professes to be making something beautiful deosn't necessarily mean they are succeeding. But mostly it is the subjectivity of beauty and the sigularity of it as a goal that has made it disfavored.
January 14, 2006 at 4:41 PM
how successful one is at creating beauty isn't really point, and we all know it depends on who is looking. the fact that it's rarely taken into consideration is. one shouldn't hope to create empty, pretty things if they want to be taken seriously at some point, but I think we've come around enough that professional artists should again at least strive to make beauty.
January 14, 2006 at 4:46 PM
Why beauty? I'm not saying that beauty isn't a perfectably acceptable aspect of art but there is room for all of human experience in art.
January 14, 2006 at 10:05 PM
Why beauty? Because I like it, (heh!) and you know....I've noticed many other people respond favorably to beauty also. There's something about "beautiful" art that people of all ages, places, times, seem to appreciate. Just because something is beautiful does not make it empty.
January 15, 2006 at 2:48 PM
gben- LOL, monkeys and poot. you have been relagated down to monkeys and poot.
marti said- "Keep in mind I'm an art simpleton..."
Marti- welcome to our site and i for one love to hear the insights of the non art crowd from time to time. i would never consider you to be a mere simpleton for that reason. After all look what poor gben has come to, lol.
January 15, 2006 at 4:48 PM
Monkey Man! Poot Painter! lol ;)
January 16, 2006 at 1:21 PM
Which one? I kind of like Poot Painter...
Perhaps I should change mine to Shallow Beauty? heh!
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