The death of painting
07/04/2010 in Art Theory
Here is an essay I recently submitted to a painting annual, in regards to the death of painting in modern art and it’s ressurection. It was quite a challenge to condense such a discussion into 1500 words, and I have to admit in my mind it left alot of holes and empty spaces that I would normally flesh out more thoroughly. But it’s still a decent read I am a bit proud of. Let’s hope the submission meets approval of the phantom decision makers out there in the world and it gets me in the publication..
“The Death of Painting”
Being what most call a “dead medium” and victim of the well known declaration in June 1839 by Paul Delaroche that “from today, painting is dead!”, painting certainly has a hill to climb. The artist aspiring to be a painter but to also be relevant and innovate within this context finds painting is not a cutting edge medium to work in by any means. I contend that painting is not dead, that it has yet to truly live at all, and that the “cutting edge” metaphorically represents an edge that cuts through the act of existing intelligently.
It’s life and death is tied to it’s use. A dead language which can allow for historical study but allows no further development and is no longer in use is considered dead because of those conditions. Equating painting to a dead language discounts it’s current widespread activity and invites questions regarding it’s purpose. And the further development of painting at the very least is still in question.
The generally accepted notion of painting as a dead medium is a response to painting as a social vehicle of visual communication and a series of actively developing methods. Before the advent of lithography, photography and related reproductive processes, painting was the only means of the reproduction of any seen image. The painter in all forms was responsible for the creation of visual imagery. With the advent of television and radio a fatal blow was struck, rendering the utilitarian service of painting to the world virtually nil, or at the very least severely amputated from what is once was. What was once time consuming, difficult, and the product of hard years of training and study changed rather quickly. Images became widely accesible and painting them became an exercise in futility in comparison. Having lost it’s utilitarian service to the world has made painting ultimately free rather than dead.
Purity of the image and work has been discussed by the painter, theorist and critic throughout past theory, though I contend it has not been a valid possibility without the current death of painting. With the virtually complete loss of it’s social servitude, that purity is finally possible. However, developing new methods and staking claim to new territory can no longer be a prominent motivating factor for the painter. Those who would seek to do something totally new find an increasingly small window in which to work, or become increasingly more focused on minutae in order to stake their claim. There is another way.
Basic deconstruction is no longer necessary since we have seen painting reduced from the reproduction of the world around us, to bare flatness and the power of the paint itself, back to photorealism, and everything in between an artist can do with a surface and a brush. The artist needs to now be unafraid to explore fully the territory that a preceding artist has discovered and wield use of it. End the drive for innovation beyond the last innovator, and come to rest within what has been made available for further exploration. Does a child die once their growth period is complete? Does seeing something within your eyes complete it’s understanding in your mind? The new deconstruction is one in which the force behind it is discovering the painter’s purpose, not merely discovering territory.
Creation, free of the stream of innovation, of the influences of history and social context, and free of production. But not aimless. The relationship of the art to the artist takes center stage as the focus.
Like anything else in the modern world, everything changed with the general development of the idea, the implementation of mass production, and the proliferation of advanced exchange. In essence the death of painting’s past due to mass production began the moment man picked up his first tool and made use of it some 700,000 years ago (oldest discovered tools). Once those tools were created, the idea of production was introduced. Everything after that led to the course of history in which the the utilitarian place of visual art slipped away from the painter. Ending generally in the time Warhol and related artists made art and painting entirely mimic to the packaging of popular culture and mass production.
Production as the end of painting is invalid. If “everything has been done” rings true, then it is an act of hypocrisy to use linear perspective for all those who did not develop the initial use of it. It becomes an act of hypocrisy to paint on a canvas if you did not first develop the use of the loom, invent the weaving of fabric, weave the canvas yourself, and engineer and execute every molecule of the creation of one single painting from the first moment to the last. In this line of thought just as a style or genre is not made new because the painter did not initiate it, all other elements of art and society should be unusable for all but the creator.
Production is a necessary support for conscious human existence and always has been. It does not define the place of painting nor does it negate the creative power of the human hand and mind. Shift in purpose and use does not equate to death, as some would suggest it has equated to the death of painting.
The accepted interpretation of the Delaroche assertion mirrors beautifully the biggest mistake of art history and in a broader sense all of human history. His true meaning was “from today, painting is dead – FOR ME”. Painting died for him. That merely opens the question of why he painted in the first place, if photography could so easily displace him from his perch. That death was the death of painting as the reproduced image whore, not as the creative realm of the hand and mind.
This bold statement traveled a wave of social acceptance until it fulfilled it’s own prophecy. However, painting is not dead for the true artist. That “truth” exists no longer if, as an artist, I decide it is not valid and can show it. It rests on the artist’s shoulders to show there is more in painting than the world has accepted. The real step is to take an entirely individual focus in art, a religious relationship between the art and the artist, now that all the other reasons for art and painting have fallen away.
Social acceptance does not create truth, it only creates the illusion of truth and the opportunity to recreate a new history for those who would seek it of their own accord. Celebrate the death of painting and run free as a result. Social drive and skewed purpose are absent from painting. All that is left is the relationship of the artist with himself and the work, and the purity long sought is finally possible. The artist must learn to be unashamed to travel where others have been, lay pigment on the same surfaces and with the same animal haired sticks. If you can’t accept that you didn’t invent the brush itself, certainly painting is dead. In that case, you are dead. The “death of painting” is an attempt to play god, unable to accept the notion that if you could not be the ultimate creator of forward movement within this pursuit, then it no longer lives.
Ultimately, it is not and has never been the purity of the image that has defined painting as being alive or dead. It is the purity of the artist that has led painting astray through it’s deconstruction and exploration, and leads it back home to a home it has never seen. And the purity of the artist that has been there all along. Ironically, seen from any angle painting can be construed as dead, not dead, never alive, always alive. It relies entirely on the point of view. Dead, if the social purpose it once served is what you choose to see. Not dead, if you choose to reject that notion as I have argued and work onward. Never alive, as history has only now revealed all it can be, and cast aside other concerns so that it can be finally pure. And always alive, as the purity of the pursuit of the artist has never been truly extinguished through any era. Obscured, tainted, and half sought and largely unseen, but never truly extinguished.
To truly answer to the purpose of painting, return to it’s beginning. Why does man paint? To reproduce for use? Is that why a child picks up a brush and spreads color?
If the real answer is to speak through an image, then the death does not exist, and no other means will replace it if paint is the means of personal choice. That mode of speech is solely the choice of the artist.
Mensagens
