Contemporary painting: It's Not Dead Yet, But It's Getting There
Katrina Blau
<respectful snip>
But all
to the same sad result: painters no longer know what they are doing.
Of course and thank goodness, there are exceptions. Otherwise painting
actually would be dead.
Lake
As a fine artist who works in the education field as a media technologist, I
felt like I needed to comment a little on this.
Painting, much like any other media, will never be dead.
I say this from the perspective of a technologist who has watched various
media transmute into similar, but other forms and as an artist who paints
(I'm getting strongly into acrylics now, where I used to be adamant that
only oils were worth anything).
As an example, let me cite slide technology. It used to be:
a person takes a photo and develops the photo as a slide. They put it in
the slide projector, or in their portfolio and have someone look at it. Now
a person takes a digital photo, develops it as a powerpoint presentation,
and posts it to the net in a javascript.
Same result...someone out there sees it...same intent...publishing...but the
media has transmuted.
In the meantime painting, which has a huge range from formal to folk,
continues to be a lively forum for visual communication, transmuting because
we keep finding new ways to express ourselves. The media itself, however,
remains as stretchable as it always was. Several hundred years worth of
stretchable. Which is kind of cool, when you think about it.
As for contemporary painting, well all I see is a huge expanding of
different techniques and viewpoints. IN fact, some of the most exciting,
meaningful paintings I have seen, have been from current artists.
(Watercolorists are doing some wonderful, meaningful things lately).
Painting sure doesn't seem dead to me.
I always love how people keep saying the Internet will get rid of paper
documents. It's like no one has noticed the total Explosion of books and
paperwork out there. All the Internet really did was give a new forum, free
of the usual middleman, to the creative individual.
Of course, when TV came out they said Radio was dead.....
The rest is gravy.
I'm pretty glad of that myself.
Katrina Blau
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John Moore
Artists today have more opprotunities to explore new concepts, techniques,
styles and anything else that might wet their artistic noodles, than in any
period of history I know of.
And that goes without even mentioning the publishing possibilities that
technology is creating.
--
John Moore
The Open Sketch Book
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnmoore100/
"Katrina Blau" <pros...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1999121013033...@hotmail.com...
lake
which has enjoyed pre-eminent status for hundreds of years. But media
do succumb to new technologies, in the sense that they may no longer
command the attention they once did.
Radio suffered this fate with the advent of television. When this
happens, the old medium is often thrown into a state of confusion, is
forced to re-evaluate premises previously taken for granted.
But in fact it was radio, not television, which invented Rock&Roll in
the 50's.
But to return to painting.......the death & life thereof.........It is
not a mere coincidence that painters moved away from realism about the
same time that photography was developed. 20th-century painting has
been an attempt to re-define painting in light of the photograph - in
fact, to re-define "reality" in light of the photograph.
There are many unanswered questions, and even more unasked questions.
M. Deli, in this forum, has boldly posited a "Church of Modern Art"
whose pronouncements are generally accepted without examination.
Although his opinions have been greeted (predictably) with a good deal
of scorn, I think it would behoove us to take a close look at them, and
at ourselves as "modern painters".
We need more questions and more answers. We need more painters who have
the courage to say something they haven't been programmed to say by
the Church of Modern Art.
-Lake
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