Why paint?
00scc...@leo.bsuvc.bsu.edu
I am eager to get opinions on this question----
WHAT IS THE STATE OF PAINTING TODAY?
If you paint--why? Is painting a dead medium, choked out by computer
generated art, installations, video, etc.???? If the upcoming exhibitions
scheduled at the Whitney are any indication, then painting must be dying.
What is the point of making a painting? Only a few people will see it (most
likely), it cannot be reproduced in any practical manner, and if you finish
paintings quickly they just pile up- reminders of past failures and forgotten
memories. If an artist wishes to express him or herself to society, painting is
certainly not the medium of choice. WHY DO IT?
S. Calvert
Mark Grennan
: I am eager to get opinions on this question----
Being in an interspective mood I'll try to answer your question.
I paint for the same resion I sing in the shower.
For me painting is a form of mental masterbation.
It is a passion, a love, a fervor for creation, a release.
Even if I'm creating a painting for someone else, the process of creation
is for me. Its selfish expresionism. I don't care what people see in my
painting, just as I don't care who may be in ear shod as I sing.
The mediam dosn't matter.
/\\ark
t
Marc Kevin Fischer
Marc Fischer sez -
Sarcastic idiot response - Why Paint? Because it sounds like a good way
to make a quick 1.8 mill for a few fukin' rectangles and squares.
Serious response - this sounds post sounds like it's from someone who's
challenging the notion of painting as though it can't possibly compete
with technology or is somehow a defunct medium. Ignorant of the S.
Calvert's position, I'll try to get in a few points but I could be here
all day so I'll be kinda brief first time around.
First off, the questions you pose in regards to problems surrounding
painting, can largely be asked in regards to any other medium as well.
For example, can computer animation or video, or installations be
reproduced in any practical manner (by practical let's say - in book
form)? I say, not really and I'd argue that conveying installation or
sculpture much less video through book photography is a lot more
problematic than painting or drawing since the latter are 2-d and still
to begin with. Though nothing can really compete with seeing any work
first hand, photographs of paintings, old master works that are covered
in thick varnish in particular, can sometimes convey more information
than the eye can readily see in a dimly lit or glare-filled gallery or
museum. Stills of videos can be useful in this way to -conveying a sense
of composition that might be missed when seen in motion.
Let's talk about technology a bit as it relates to society. If drawing
is the most democratic medium because it's cheap enough that anyone can
do it, painting and some forms of sculpture are a close second. Now
let's talk about computer art which after anyone gets bored with their
Amiga or something, starts to become mighty expensive. Most graduates of
Carnegie Mellon I know who were highly interested in computer or
technological art-making, are now bound to the institution in order to
continue their work because they can't afford a Mac, a color scanner,
and color printer, etc. etc. Much less a video editting set up, a
camera, sound equipment, etc. etc. etc. Sure technology can be a great
tool for art. I'd never dispute that. But the fact is that if you prefer
to make work independent from constant institutional affiliation, unless
you are very wealthy, all of this technology is quite expensive.
Painting remains accessable to all people in this way. I work in a
prison and I can assure you that none of the inmates are making
cibachromes and computer animation pieces. They continue to paint and
draw not onlty because they respond to this work, but out of necessity.
Formallty speaking, painting offers some things the computer and other
technological mediums still can not. One simple one is surface. A print
out has a flat smooth surface, paintings can push surface to great
measures. I just saw the Dubuffet show at the Hirshorn (great by the
way!). Dubuffet activates the surfaces of his paintings in amazing and
very visually rich ways through the addition of many natural materials
like gravel to the paint.
I haven't been to the place often but I think it's safe to say that
there are obvious curatorial dillemas at the Whitney. If Jean Michel
Basquiat is the state of painting today, much less Sue Williams, please
amputate all limbs of mine capable of making pigment move across a
surface. Don't mind the Whitney. Look further and there are plenty of
people who continue to do exciting or at least interesting stuff with
the medium - pushing it to new extremes. A few off the top of my head
might be Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, Malcolm Morley, Elizabeth Murray,
Mark Tansey, Gerhard Richter, etc.
"Only a few people will see it [painting]" I don't get your point - or
at least how this is a big problem for painting. How many people will
see all of those much talked about installations from Documenta? Will
they travel to more than one place if at all - if they weren't taken
down and thrown away when it was all over? Not likely. Remember,
paintings are portable. Video could be more accessable since so many
people in America own VCR's if artists were more open to selling their
video work inexpensively to consumers. For example, most videos must be
rented for a showing for say a few hundred dollars. If I want to see a
Bruce Nauman video (and there are some I really would like to see), I'm
screwed unless I go to a museum and they happen to be showing one
(unlikely) or my college library has a copy (which they don't). Now if I
want to see a Bruce Nauman drawing, that might be tough too, but at
least in a book, I can get a greater overall sense of the thing then I
can from a video still. This gets back to reproduction. This is by no
means an arguement against technology - it's just a way in which society
is often limited in it's access to such work.
Overproduction and lack of critical judgement on the part of the artist
- is this exclusive to painting? No way. Sure painters get stuck being a
part of the same medium of choice as people like Julian Schnabel - folks
who clearly pump it out for the market and seem to operate under the
assumption that anything with a dribble of oily stuff that fell from
their brush (or an assistant's brush) has been touched by God. But I
think this exists everywhere in the art world - all mediums. Computer
art, performance, video, and everything else I'm sure. Artists are
frequently a little uneven and some artists are extremely uneven.
Okay, that's a ton. Let's keep this dialogue going though and I'd be
interested to hear more from some of the technologically oriented folks
as well - perhaps how they feel about some of the problems concerning
representation of such work.
Gotta go - Marc
00scc...@leo.bsuvc.bsu.edu
In article <ggHjzsG00...@andrew.cmu.edu>, mf...@andrew.cmu.edu (Marc Kevin Fischer) writes:
>> I am eager to get opinions on this question----
>>WHAT IS THE STATE OF PAINTING TODAY?
>> If you paint--why? Is painting a dead medium, choked out by computer
>
> Serious response - this sounds post sounds like it's from someone who's
> challenging the notion of painting as though it can't possibly compete
> with technology or is somehow a defunct medium.
I do not believe that painting is a defunct medium, only that its
purpose is unclear. When I say I am looking for a purpose in painting I am
thinking of a purpose found in the writings during the heyday of the
Russian avant-garde through the abstract expressionists, the minimalists (I
suppose I could just say Modern painting). These painters were not just
painting to pass the time, they thought they were going to change the
world! (if not the actual paintings, the theories) We can laugh at some of
the writings of Malevich and Kandinski now, but the enthusiastic optimism in
the power of art (visual in this case) is something sorely missing today (as
a whole). If Kandinski were painting today, how would he paint? Would he
even bother? He painted with faith in an upcoming utopia, a new spiritual
epoch. Today the dominant sentiment is "hope it doesn't get any worse."
> "Only a few people will see it [painting]" I don't get your point - or
> at least how this is a big problem for painting. How many people will
> see all of those much talked about installations from Documenta? Will
It is not a problem if you do not want to use painting as a way of
reaching others. I was first attracted to the visual arts just as most are-
dissatisfaction with verbal communication. When I do painting after painting
and only show them to the same small circle of other painters, I feel like I am
shouting in the void. I accept this as a condition of the medium and it does
not affect my desire to paint--- when I am painting the last thought in the
right side of my brain is exhibiting the work.
Mike Melton
>I do not believe that painting is a defunct medium, only that its purpose is
>unclear.
That's because painting doesn't have a singular purpose.
00scc...@leo.bsuvc.bsu.edu
>
> Overproduction and lack of critical judgement on the part of the artist
> - is this exclusive to painting? No way. Sure painters get stuck being a
> part of the same medium of choice as people like Julian Schnabel - folks
> who clearly pump it out for the market and seem to operate under the
> assumption that anything with a dribble of oily stuff that fell from
There are some Schnabel paintings that I have enjoyed, but I cannot
help but see him as the Garth Brooks of painting. Seen that Donald Kuspit
video with Schnabel, Clemente and other 'neo-exressionists'? - Schnabel out
on his tennis court sitting in a big chair looking over his paintings- that
scene kills me. The Castelli's and the Boone's are the Warner Bros. of the
art world- that entire scene has little to do with the promoting arts in any
positive form. The artist as superstar (what is up with all this Basquait
hoopla?) It seems that the basic reason to paint has only been boosted by the
rabid materialism-- asserting one's individual self in a growing population?
express the unconscious, reach for the spiritual in a society that has turned
away from the spiritual? use your art form to attack the materialistic
disease? attack the bigoted, male-oriented art world? the end of verbal
communication? "the possibilities are endless" (lou reed style) S. Calvert
Ted Park
: I am eager to get opinions on this question----
I paint things to keep them from rusting. Also to protect walls and
other household surfaces. They told me to use oil paint
in the bathroom, but I had to buy a zillion of those little toothpaste
tube things. Cost a fortune too.
I would think that painting is NOT a dead medium. Many people paint for
their own enjoyment or personal exprssion, much the same way that personal
journals are kept. As with writing, I don't think that there's one reason
that people paint. It is not important for such items to be reproducable,
since they really aren't a public consumption item.
Painting would probably not be as good a medium for conveying ideas to
society as a whole as say, TV, Many people look at paintings and go
"Huh?" so a message could be generally lost.
As for requiring reasons to paint, I don't see why a reason would be
needed. . .
On another tack,
I wonder what would have happend if renaissance artists had had access
to black velvet and pastels. . .
--Ted.
-----------------------------------------------------
Ted Park - sysadmin and mover of large, heavy objects
Novatel Communications Ltd. t...@novatel.cuc.ab.ca
Phone 403-295-4982 t...@tbgcal.cuc.ab.ca