Top right: John Dubrow holding court, Bottom left: Mario Naves, Bottom right: Greg Drasler
(all photos by the author for Hyperallergic unless otherwise noted)
Three months ago I attended a discussion at Hunter College called “…towards meaning in a plural painting world.” The panel sought to examine today’s multiplicity of painting styles and determine if this is a positive or dilutive development for painting’s meaning as a whole. Last Wednesday, the Pratt Institute took on similar subject with a panel titled Painting Matters Now: a Conversation.
Moderated by artist Nancy Grimes, she explained this panel had come out of “conversations I had with colleagues about the state of painting,” in which they asked each other “Why are young artists choosing to paint, despite attempts to drive a stake through painting? Why does one medium attract so much malice, particularly in the academy?” The focus of this panel was thus on “What matters with painting now and why?” She began by asking the panel, comprised of painters Greg Drasler, Laurie Fendrich, John Dubrow and painter-cum-writers Mario Naves and Peter Plagens, to talk about their formative years as young artists.
Laurie Fendrich, “An Honest Stupid Soul” (2010),
Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 inches, (Courtesy of the artist)
Fendrich recollected that as a student it was as natural to be a painter as it was to be a plumber. There was no need to justify oneself amid the rise of video and installation art, competition was slim and one didn’t feel pitted against peers working in other media. Dubrow recounted his art school experience as being the exact opposite. To be a painter was to be a particular kind of painter, usually ironic or photo-based and he realized quickly, “I was on my own.” He was happy about this, enjoying the tremendous freedom and finding productivity in working against the current.
Plagens, claiming to be the most ancient of the panelists, discussed the battle between the Bay Area figurative painters and abstract painters while he was a student at USC in 1958–62. Figurative painters were more prominent, but there was an “incipient avant-gardism forming in LA that would accuse figurative painters of being mere illustrators.” Drasler recalled the influence of Jim Nutt and the Chicago Imagists and remembered the impact of James Rosenquist’s epic painting “F-111,” named after the fire bomber plane and seen by the student at an age when he was draftable. Drasler took it as symbolic of his vocation, when one day his studio building caught fire and all that survived were two paintings.
Greg Drasler, “Internal Combustion” (2011), oil on linen, 40″ x 32″ (Courtesy of the artist)
Naves mentioned how he drifted into painting, with interests in philosophy and writing, while a graduate student at Pratt. With rumblings of painting’s perceived death and resuscitation throughout his education, he reminded everyone that painting has been around for a long time “since the scratchings on cavewalls … the only place where painting is dead is the art world.”
Grimes asked the panel if painting was still viable, or if it is perceived as a marginalized medium. Conversation then turned to the schism between painting, a slow medium engaging one viewer at a time, and newer mediums attuned to the large-scale expectations of global art fairs.
Fendrich remarked painting was not marginalized considering it is predominantly what’s on sale in Chelsea. But compared to higher-profile work — what Fendrich called “big installation and international art, like Christian Marclay’s “The Clock” — painters feel like their efforts are puny by comparison. She referenced disillusionment with the continued bloat of the art market, citing the critic David Hickey’s much touted exit from art writing. There is a disgust at who is actually “powering the art world” with artists “aside to the negotiations.” In the past, aesthetic discussions around art gave painting a lot of energy, but today’s art magazines have become merely descriptive. Drasler mentioned a loss for culture now that an artwork’s merit is chiefly determined by the price it fetches at auction.
Nancy Grimes, “Peristalsis” (2001), Oil on linen , 20″ x 40″ (Courtesy of the artist)
Plagens, who played the devil’s advocate throughout the evening, remarked painting was not marginalized, but neither does it have the same “historical primacy” it once did. Citing the 17th century by way of hyperbolic comparison, he noted that “biennials are everywhere and the artworld is much more global.” Painting doesn’t carry as much “cultural clout” as it once did, and can’t be scandalous as it once was in the hands of such artists as Jackson Pollock. Plagens also expressed a weariness of, “painters being sentimental about painting.” If assessed objectively, “painting is not really under attack.”
Grimes countered that she’s witnessed students feel coerced away from painting. A student in the audience piped in that she was often told “everything has been done in painting” and felt a need to justify her choices. Dubrow remarked that the “viability” of painting was “a problematic idea.” That there are great painters in history who aren’t known and that over time individual contributions get sifted out. “When I go to museums, I don’t see [individual artworks] as markers in history,” but rather “how an artist has personally engaged [an artwork’s] construction.”
John Dubrow, “Central Park” (2011-13), Oil on linen, 20″ x 24″ (Courtesy of the artist)
Talk turned to other forms of art institutionalization, namely academia and the College Art Association. Fendrich mentioned the number of CAA grants going to MFA students doing research-based art. “Art can’t stand alone … it is the backstory that is interesting.” This is contributing to deliberations as to whether the PhD will replace the MFA as the terminal degree in fine art. She also brought up the need for creative studies as a foil to the emergence of STEM education, an initiative focusing learning primarily on the sciences, technology, engineering and math. Plagens pointed out the MBA is already the new MFA, “Students don’t want to be paint-splattered.” He spoke of the art school “critique” which conditions young artist to get good at giving explanations, a subject James Elkins has taken up recently in his book Art Critiques: A Guide. An audience member pointed to the degree of philosophical obfuscation in art school that prevents a student from simply engaging a medium. There is a “bait-and-switch” involved: “If someone wants to learn about basketball, you don’t hand them a golf club.” This echoed an earlier comment by Dubrow, that “It has been a mistake to try and lump painting in with other art forms.”
Grimes then asked, “What are the issues for painting that matter?” This is a question with no clear answer, but one that would provoke impassioned statements from the audience. Plagens compared painting to both jazz and the Spanish Empire, in that they’ve all had their heyday and shared moments of greatness. He considered all three important as discreet subjects but now painting itself is one of a bunch of art making alternatives. Certain artists come along and tackle issues of their time, leaving issues for the next generation to solve, but to insist on a primacy of painting is like a President running on an old or outdated platform.
Franklin Evans, “houstontohouston” (2012), 3,000 sq. ft. mixed media installation (Courtesy of the artist)
Panelists spoke of the speed, singularity and clear boundaries of painting that provide both freedom and room for error that can be generative of new work. Fendrich mentioned that a reason painting remains “Queen of the arts” is its inimitable color, a quality competing mediums can’t duplicate. Drasler brought up the changing understanding of what painting is, “not just paint on a canvas, it can be ephemeral.” He explained that some installation art derives its elements and construction from the language of painting, while some components of painting are moving into other practices that embrace sculpture and time. These comments had me thinking about Franklin Evan’s recent painterly environments, while Naves noted that “so much with painting is a matter of perseverance, an individual pursuit that takes a long time.”
An audience member remarked about a desensitization taking place in the arts, where we have generations of curators who “can’t see.” Likewise … “You walk through the Prado and people are snapping images of the paintings on their digital devices without looking at the paintings.” Someone else brought up the Pierro della Francesca show at the Frick as an example of painting that delivers on all accounts: formally, metaphorically and humanely. He also lamented the mostly narrative and conceptual approaches to a lot of art today. “People aren’t really interested in the internal relationships in paintings and the literal was so much stronger in the culture now (resulting in) mediums like painting and poetry to be marginalized.” As a challenge to this trend, Fendrich, cited both G.E. Lessing’s Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry and James Elkin’s What Painting Is, books that instead observe the close, intrinsic properties of the medium itself.
At one hopeful juncture in the evening, Fendrich reminded the audience that with painting “everything has not been done. If you mine culture, there are still plenty of roads to walk down.”
Painting Matters Now: A Conversation moderated by Nancy Grimes, was held at the Pratt Institute’s Brooklyn Campus Alumni Reading Room, Third Floor on Wednesday, April 17 at 6:30pm.
painting stll has a relationship with the ‘common man”, it can be personalized,owned,taken home.
it is not “painting” that is under attack, rather what absolutely is “under attack” is any recognition of higher ideals, which have been the traditional focus and starting point for painting in the western tradition.
“What are the issues for painting that matter?” Grr, I don’t value art for “issues,” but for experience. Plus, the fact that there is nothing left to push against simply means that artists must choose an illusion in the face of nothing. And they better care about it, because nobody else will for a long time.
Indeed, everything has not been done. To suggest this is to give our own historical time period some kind of special status, akin to assuming that evolution is finished. There’s lots to be done!
The main problem in Western cultures as concerns the arts is that so many wannabes claim to be artists when in fact no one cares one measly iota about their paltry creations.
Real artists are known wherever they go because they have more life-energy in them than everyone else and we fall in love with them for it.
Painting is essentially a form of image-making. To say that painting is dead is to say that images are dead and only the blind can feel that way.
In NYC, only a handful of painters are worth checking out and the rest are boring people spiritually and this is too obvious.
I didn’t “claim[ ] to be the most ancient of the panelists,” as if that were a judgment call. A throw-down of driver’s licenses would have revealed that I’m 72, and the others on the panel were, comparatively, whippersnappers.
— Cheers,
Peter Plagens
I agree thoroughly with Virginia Bryant and JD Siazon — although Wash DC claims hundreds of excellent painters versus NYC’s very few. But there’s something that lifts on scintillating airs and distinctions that we all feel like a riptide, in a paint language, paint philosophy, and forging on through all tomorrows without narrative pause. I have not given up on images and only recently realized the potential there as if Freud’s ucs, cs, pcs, have come together to celebrate with every conceptional ruse and the unconcept. So then there’s the uncanny.
Painting has “died” and “come back” so many times the whole premise as a discussion point is worn out and smells much like zombie, to me. All depends on how you define it. Mark making or image making using whatever means has not (will not) disappear. You have only to concede that if making a mark via computer is another permutation in the long history of painting’s evolution then painting is as lively and more pervasive than it has ever been in human history. Perhaps painting has just “left the building” and is out there with no price on its head, electrified and dematerialized doing what it has always done to define a particular time and place in being human.
True , I see painting as so inherent to art from the paintings of the cavemen on that it is inescapable. I could go so far as to say that it is the definitive element that defines almost all cultures, if you include the various forms of mark making which always come before any form of written language , I would go as far as to say that written language has to come from painting as painting provides all the elements of language to exist as written language is a comprehensive set of symbols ,codes and marks that make written language possible to begin with. I see painting as so deeply ingrained with in us ,that it is inherent. To me this accounts for the fascination that many artists have and have had with childhood . Whether painting is loved ,hated, despised ,ignored or celebrated, it will always be there whether we want it to be or not. Like our shadow ,it follows us everywhere .
I think the problem I have with a lot of galleries is that there too safe. Like films they just remake the films that sold before. I see a lot of insane technical energy going into boring art. The subject matter is not their own, and they copy the trends to make money. Same thing with music now , highly technical amount of ability a lot of the time, but not much memorable songs. I ,d rather see “bad” art, as long as it was “from the heart” now.
This announcement caught my eye while at Galerie Krobath in Vienna last week. The card is titled “Why Painting Now?” and reads:
“Painting is a social process, where artists, viewers, institutions and media are equally involved. The fifth edition of curated by-vienna, initiated by departure, the City of Vienna’s agency for the creative industries, aims at launching a discussion pivoted on a differentiated analysis of today’s discourse of painting. Selected Viennese galleries for contemporary art will present a number of exhibitions conceived by international curators.”