Contemporary painting: Its Not Dead Yet, But Its Getting There

:associated with religion, or supra-normal reality. : :Now that everyone & their brother has jumped on the electric-media :bandwagon, painting has been rudely relegated to the back seat. But :wasn't it Cezanne & Van Gogh who started the whole thing rolling in the :first place? : :What really has happened to painting in these past hundred years? :Metaphysically, spiritually, perceptually, socially - where did it go :to? Do we really believe that after a dozen millenia it is going to :disappear because some clever fellows have invented a television? Or a :computer?

That's a good question and opens lively possibilities for debate. When I studied art history - when we got to late 19th century and forward my mind was boggled! There seemed to be as movements and 'isms' as there were, combined, from the Prehistoric period. Why has painting changed so much? Why are they saying it is dead? My first answer, though only speculation, is that we have made more inventions/discoveries during the past 100 years than combined, throughout history. Painting/sculpture is or has been influenced by societal and cultural practices - but, our cultures are merging and not being as distinct as in the past. Someone 3000 miles can be reading this within seconds of me sending it. So, lately, the computer has everyone in awe. I don't see how we can escape the influence in our culture of electronic media and believe me, I'm not cheering for it, being mostly ignorant of it all - but will it last? This brings me to the much-lamented rumor of painting's death. The painters I know who sell are selling more than ever and they are selling larger. I've said it before, but I'll repeat myself in my belief that painting will NOT die and has not died simply because we are a consumerist society. Installations - where will we put it? How many can we OWN and have space for? Photographs - can't guard against duplicates and if we are a collector, we love the fact of owning the one-of-a-kind art. Sculpture - alive and well, though it has been reported as dead or dying also, but IMO, sculpture isn't as popular as paintings simply because paintings are easier to hang on a wall to showcase the collector's ownership. So while a collector may have space for 10 paintings, even large ones, that many sculptures won't fit comfortably. Also, sculptures are often large and site-specific sculpture is thriving and becoming more and more publicly funded. (To be continued) Kay

Maybe you need to drop the categories and see the variety of styles, aims, periods, forms, and sheer painting that have come under the headings of abstract and realistic

Yes, the categories abstract and realistic hardly tell anything about the actual work. They're not completely useless however, if someone says not to like abstract art then something of Pollock is probably out of the question, perhaps a Rembrandt will do

Please, send me one! <grin> (Not the ones returned to San Francisco. They're too beat up now.)

John John Haber

Well, actually, in some cultures it WAS religion...but that's a split hair. It's my religion, modernly.

It has?

Actually, photography is what took painting down a notch (in terms of usefulness). Intellectual painting was beginning to mutate at just the right time, just as functional painting was being replaced by the photograph. Before the camera, the illustrator filled it's role.

Today, the craft of rendering is merely an exercise. It is an IMPORTANT one which all artists should master, but not one that must necessarily be exhibited in worthwhile art. Today, using the term 'abstract art' to describe modern painting is about as archaic as using a slide rule to balance your checkbook.

Um...no? Some ignoranti like to credit Cezanne et al with the birth of all things modern, but I disagree. The postimpressionists are certainly significant to modernity, but those who opened doors were as much influenced by the oldest of the old masters as they were by 1890s Paris. Tribal African art can be given just as much credit, as can Japanese printmaking, etc. There is no singular timeline upon which one thing leads directly to another.

It has evolved.

Who are you talking to? Who are you asking? Who thinks television has replaced painting? Nothing ever REPLACES painting. Everything effects painting, because artists, as humans, are bound by their experiences. As we, as modern artists, experience our modern world, we cannot pretend to be unaffected by the details of our lives. If technology has done anything for painting, it has made more variations of it possible. Electricity in general has done worlds of good for painting (lights?) - Computers are just tools like automobiles or toaster ovens.

This sounds like an argument from 1983 or 1986.

Art encompasses all things. As a living artist, you should embrace technology and use it for what it is, and what it can do for your work.

All painting is abstraction, loosely. 'This is not a pipe.'

There is a lengthy definition in most dictionaries, if you don't know. The first variant is 'Considered apart from concrete existence.' All painters are abstract painters. If I paint a picture of you, and it is 'realistic' in every detail, is it you? 'This is not a pipe.'

I think it's a yawn.