I have read in some writings that painting at one point my have been ‘dead’ in terms of popularity and importance in the art world. Especially round the time of conceptual art in the 60’s and ‘YBA era’ in the 90’s. Painting has made a ‘come back’ several times for various reasons like conceptual art becoming overused after the boom in the 90’s and the change in economy possibly the recession, and it becoming exciting again being another reason. The art world showing more attention on painting, could be a safe rebound from risk taking conceptual art. I have been told about this, read about this and can see it with my own eyes that this is happening. I want to explore more reasons why painting’s popularity has been so unstable over the years, I want to explore why and if it did actually ‘die’. I aim to explore these theories about painting being ‘dead’ or having died in the past and also I want to look at what difficulties it has had in the evolution of art. I feel painting’s importance is paired with drawing, it is something you do as a child, which is a benchmark way of expressing yourself, it is there in a persons life from pretty much the begging, before artists become an artist, I’m sure the every artist, love painting or not, has had a relationship with it in the past. This I good reason why to explore paintings popularity, because painting is so important to the art world and the people in it, so why does it keep being considered’ dead’?
One of the issues painting has had in the past is that, at the time of it’s fall in popularity, is because it had become a commodity and repetitive. Artists and viewers could have been getting bored of painting and possibly thought that it was just aiming for buyers, paintings could have been seen as pretty picture’s to other artists and critics to sell better. Like in painting, the ‘nude’ figure lost, it’s meaning because of it being over used, artists were using it to represent ridiculous things, and using it as a pin-up[1] rather than a meaningful parson in history like Mary the mother of Christ. Painting as a whole could have done that to the art world; I can imagine it could have got stale and repetitive. In the art world when a fresh, new, exciting movement or a technique people flock to it and want a piece of it. People are constantly looking for, outstanding, possibly rebellious, new things and painting was not that. Painting had become and old man in a grey old suit, not rebellious at all, while movements in the art world like Dada were the 18-year-old punk kid, flicking the V’s up to society, excuses my analogy. People like rebellion, they find it intriguing. This is where painters eventually and inevitably had to create new styles, concepts and reasons to paint, rather conforming to the buyer’s desire. An example is Surrealism. It created new ways of painting then when that got stale some years down the line came abstract expressionism with Jackson Pollock and the ‘New York School’ and the painters out of this group where huge and revived painting. I feel this revived painting again because it was just after the war and the work was a rebound from that, That fact that the style got so popular was possibly its down fall because it got too mainstream. Companies wanted to own the painting’s in skyscraper’s in New York, like Rothko’s Paintings[2] and Pollock got one of his painting’s on an album cover, Free Jazz by Ornett Coleman[3], which make me believe that this could have commoditized painting yet again. I look at my “Artist Time Line’ in front of me[4] and see that after these painter’s there was a big influx of painters came to the scene. Movements and artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg (‘Neo Dada’), Ad Reinhardt, Frank Stella (‘Hard Edge Painting’), Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Richard Hamilton (‘pop art) shortly followed by Francis bacon, Leon Kossoff, Frank Aurback and Lucien Freud (‘school of London’). You can see this is high point in painting, but it make me feel that some of these artist wouldn’t be as popular if it wasn’t for them coming after Abstract expressionism because painting was in demand. After this demand though, my guess is that painting kind out ‘sold-out’ and became a commodity again or it just got boring, cue the beginning of 1960’s conceptual art and for ten years I cannot see any major painting movements until ‘photorealism’ (chuck Close) and ‘neo expressionism’ (Gerhart Richter). I know that the painters before them where still making work, but they were not as significant as they used to be.
Another difficulty painting was the creation of photography and photography being used as an art form. The thing that photography had an upper hand on was the instance and the ability to replicate, which has been written about in the Walter Benjamin essay: The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, 1936[5]. Photography was revolutionary and that fact that paintings took so long to do, in terms of landscape and portrait, gave photography a big popularity. But the thing that painting had over photography was the ability to manipulate the image and the ability to make is as abstract as you want, I feel, this is a large factor why painting, got less and less photorealistic because it couldn’t be done with a camera. It makes me think, that the idea of painting in a naïf, abstract manor had not have been thought of, painting might actually have died, vanished from the art world. It has been very difficult to manipulate photographs up until now with addition of Photoshop. If feel painting did nearly ‘die’ at the time of the beginning of photography, I guess people thought “what is the point?” Plus, the Dada movement was pointing the art world to a new exciting direction; I guess painting needed a new direction. Then came surrealism, with artists such as Salvador Dali and Max Ernst, abstract painting which photography could not match.
Critics in art
Critics only want to see what they want. Ignoring paint because in not a new fad. Painting wills all ways be there so it does not matter of it loses is popularity, I believe. Painting losing its popularity will not burden painting as much but the artist’s well being, their lively hood. I can understand some painters trying new mediums if the paint market has gone stale because it is the way they make a living, but then you can question is it their real beliefs? For these reasons you can see how all of the mediums in art are unstable. They all need their time to shine.
Clement Greenberg, the critic, had a huge factor on the popularity of Abstract expressionism, giving it a lot of praise, especially in his writing’s In the 1955 essay "American-Type Painting[6]" he practically promoted Abstract expressionism which was a for-sure way to ‘resurrect’ painting. Critics can have a huge factor on the popularity of art, and a lot of the main focus in the past twenty years has been focus on the YBA’s, because they have been shocking. I am sure this is another time and reason painting had ‘died’, in the 90’s the art scene and the tabloids was fixated on the rebellious ‘YBA’s’. This obviously over shadowed painting at this time, because people like Sara Lucas, who was making work such as ‘Au Naturel’ (1994)[7]and Tracy Emin making the ‘My Bed’ (1998)[8] obviously made painting look un-cool compared to these work of art.
Painting now
I feel that paintings state at the moment is a weird situation. I see a painters that have been around for a long time but also I see a lot of contemporary artists make art in all mediums, like Ed Templeton who uses photography and painting in his work[9] together and separately, and Damien Hirst, who makes sculptures/installations of animals and chemists but has recently turned to painting. I feel that some artist just want to make work that fits what is happening with the artwork because it changes so often now. I feel there is not any defying movements or certain styles at the moment. I feel that the state of art at-the-moment is a mad blur of all art; photography is on the increase as I saw in the last Friez art fair, 2009. Therefore, paintings status is neither up or down because it is in the spotlight as much as any medium now. I also want to discuss the attitudes that painters have toward painting now compared to people like Jackson Pollock. I feel painters now have a much more laid back out-look on them selves and their work. Unlike Jackson Pollock and people as such who the viewed them selves as geniuses and I do not believe that is that fact as much anymore. Now days you see painting that have a tongue-in-cheek view on the world and the art world but that makes me think about the importance of painting and the subject the paintings are expressing. Painting then was important, because it was raising important issues and questions, not that painting isn’t really dealing with those issue’s, its not being as ‘in-your-face’ and is hanging out in the back ground. Look at contemporary painters like Ian davenport, Glenn Brown and Stuart Cumberland[10] their work doesn’t seem on the surface to be very serious but it does have a deeper premise like Stuart Cumberland’s painting’s, they mock the way of mechanical reproduction, but on the surface they have bright, aesthetically pleasing colours and shapes that look have a cartoon like style.
Through my writing I have looked at different eras art and in them painting has been highly popular in the art spectrum and then unpopular. I want to conclude that I feel that main reason for its popularity and up popularity is what the next new thing is, and eventually painters come up with the next new thing. This makes it popular again. I have always felt that painting is a must-have in the art, it might fade from the pop culture for a while but it will never actually disappear. It moves from the forefront of the art word the back ground but it is not painting as medium that becomes hidden away, but it is the artist making the work. If it stale and boring then it will do, and when something fresh, new, exciting and pushes the boundaries, obviously its going get talked about, ‘any press is good press’ the saying goes, and the more press, the more popular. That is why YBA's was so popular and still is talked about, because people where questioning whether it is art or not, it may be bad press but it got them on the map. There are always painters; it is not as black and white as saying ‘painting is dead’. I feel personally painting isn’t ‘dead’ and never has been. Just at times it has been in the background in the art world, and maybe it has to sometimes fade to the background to let art world evolve, let other artist with new ideas come along but painting will always be there, still alive.
Bibliography
· Lucy Lippard, Six years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972, university of California press, 1973
· Vitamin D: new perspectives in drawing. Emma Dexter, Phaidon, 2005
· Vitamin P: new perspectives in painting By Barry Schwabsky, Thomas Bayrle, Phaidon, 2002
· Walter Benjamin The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction First published in, 1936 in Visual Culture: Experiences in visual culture By Joanne Morra, Marquard Smith
· Fanelli, S. (2006) ‘Tate Artists Timeline’, Tate. Published
· Greenberg, C 'American-Type Painting', Partisan Review, 1955, p.58; reprinted in O'Brian ed. vol.3, 1993, p.219.
· Nicholas Robinson Gallery, Press Release, 2010.
· http://www.Google.com
· http://www.Imdb.com
· http://www.nrgallery.com/
· http://www.Freize.com
· Http://www.toymachine.com/ed/
· Rothko's Rooms, 2000 (Film) Directed by David Thompson: Digital Classics
· Jasper Johns: ideas in paint [videorecording] / produced and directed by Rick Tejada-Flores., 2006
[1] Bicker, P. (2009), "Concepts of Drawing", Lecture, Westminster University, unpublished.
[3] http://www.jazz.com/assets/2008/6/11/albumcoverOrnetteColeman-FreeJazz.jpg
[4] Fanelli, S. (2006) ‘Tate Artists Timeline’, Tate. Published
[5] Walter Benjamin The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction First published in, 1936 in Visual Culture: Experiences in visual culture By Joanne Morra, Marquard Smith
[6] Greenberg, C 'American-Type Painting', Partisan Review, 1955, p.58; reprinted in O'Brian ed. vol.3, 1993, p.219.
[7]http://www.bbc.co.uk/collective/gallery/2/index.shtml?collection=sarahlucas&mode=dynamic
[8] http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/tracey_emin.htm
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