4. Postconceptual Painting and its
Legacies
Painting genres provide the contexts and
stimulus necessary for postconceptual
practice.
Major exhibitions initiating three major
genres since the ’70s:
Wim Delvoye
Tatooed Pigs
2000
5. Photorealism
Originates in 1968 Whitney show Twenty-two Realists
Prominent figures of the ’60s and ’70s:
Malcolm Morley
Robert Bechtle >
Chuck Close
Richard Estes
6. Defined Photorealism as follows:
1. The Photo-Realist uses the camera and photograph to gather information.
2. The Photo-Realist uses a mechanical or semimechanical means to transfer the
information to the canvas.
3. The Photo-Realist must have the technical ability to make the finished work
appear photographic.
4. The artist must have exhibited work as a Photo-Realist by 1972 to be considered
one of the central Photo-Realists.
10. New Image
New Image Painting, Whitney, NYC (1978);
A New Spirit in Painting (1981); Royal Academy, London
Zeitgiest (1982); Martin Gropisu Bau, West Berlin
11. New Image as International Movement?
USA - New Image (1978-)
UK – ‘New Glasgow Boys’ (New Image Glasgow 1985)
Federal Republic of Germany - Neue Wilde (Late 1970s-)
Italy – Transavantgardia (1976-_
Soviet Union - Sots Art / Apt Art (1972-1992)
12. David Salle
My Subjectivity 1981
Julian Schnabel Bob's
World (1980)
Oil, wax, bondo, ceramic
plates and horns on wood
and canvas
24. Achille Bonita Olivia
Transavantgardia, Aperto ‘80
Bonita Achille Oliva, Flash Art, 7/80,
"Transavantgardia"
"The missing pride of the conceptual artist's work,
the elitist behavior of the artist who was playing on
the amazement of the public and on the element of
surprise, are being replaced by the humility of
creative, accessible, and real work. Art becomes
again direct expression, leaving behind it the feeling
of guilt for being permanent, which was a symptom
of contact with the world. The artist becomes again
maniacal and Mannerist in his own mania."
30. China post Mao-1989
1966-1976 Cultural Revolution
China Avant-garde, National Gallery of Art in Beijing in 1989 marked end of the New Wave
Currently being revisted in shows such as:
31. Warhol by Wang Guangyi Bloodline: Three comrades by Zhang Xiaogang
32. Bad Painting
‘Bad’ is slang for ‘good’
Bad signifies an attitude towards painting….
Paul Thek (1985)
33. Bad Painting (New Museum, NYC 1/14/78 - 2/28/78 )
“a rejection of the concept of progress per se. . . .
freedom to do and to be whatever you want.." –
"'Bad' Painting" catalogue.
Asger Jorn Philip Guston
38. Co-hosted by Chris Stein (Blondie) and filmmaker Amos Poe
on Manhattan public access television.
In 1978, two revolutionary trends emerged in New York City, public access cable TV
and punk rock. These two phenomena came together spectacularly in Glenn O'Brien's
TV Party. O'Brien recruited his pal Chris Stein, the guitarist of Blondie, as his co-host,
fellow Factory kid Walter Steding as leader of The TV Party Orchestra, and
underground film director Amos Poe as director and the rest, as you'll see, was
history. Hipsters tuned in to follow the antics of the TV Party gang and such guests as
Iggy Pop, David Bowie, P-Funk's George Clinton, The Clash's Mick Jones, Kid Creole,
Klaus Nomi, as well as performances from acts like Tuxedo Moon, the Brides of
Funkenstein, Alex Chilton, and more
http://www.tvparty.tv/
39. Times Square Show, 1980.
In June 1980, more than a hundred
artists installed their work in an
empty massage parlor near Times
Square. Organized by Colab,
the Times Square Show included
graffiti artists, feminist artists,
political artists, Xerox artists,
40. "New York/New Wave" held at PS 1, Institute for Art and Urban Resources (1981).
56. Walker Art Center
FEBRUARY 10-MAY 6, 2001
PAINTING AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
“Clearly, this medium is no longer bound by the traditional categories of abstraction,
figuration, portraiture, or landscape, or even by its conventional definition as paint on
canvas.”
Paul Thek installation at
57. FRANZ ACKERMANN - GERMANY PAUL McCARTHY - U.S.
HALUK AKAKÇE - TURKEY/U.S. LUCY McKENZIE - SCOTLAND
FRANCIS ALŸS - BELGIUM/MEXICO JULIE MEHRETU - ETHIOPIA/U.S.
KEVIN APPEL - U.S. TAKASHI MURAKAMI - JAPAN
MARCEL BROODTHAERS - BELGIUM NADER - IRAN/GERMANY
JOHN CURRIN - U.S. CHRIS OFILI - ENGLAND
MARLENE DUMAS - SOUTH AFRICA/ THE
NETHERLANDS
HÉLIO OITICICA - BRAZIL
ANDREAS GURSKY - GERMANY LAURA OWENS - U.S.
EBERHARD HAVEKOST - GERMANY
MICHAEL RAEDECKER - THE
NETHERLANDS/ENGLAND
ARTURO HERRERA - VENEZUELA/U.S. THOMAS SCHEIBITZ - GERMANY
MIKE KELLEY - U.S. THOMAS SCHÜTTE - GERMANY
MARTIN KIPPENBERGER - GERMANY RUDOLF STINGEL - ITALY/U.S.
UDOMSAK KRISANAMIS - THAILAND/U.S. HIROSHI SUGITO - JAPAN
JIM LAMBIE - SCOTLAND PAUL THEK - U.S.
MARGHERITA MANZELLI - ITALY RICHARD WRIGHT - SCOTLAND
58. PAINTING AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
“photograph (Andreas Gursky),
a walk through a city (Francis Alÿs),
club culture-inspired (Jim Lambie),
applied directly to a wall (Richard Wright, Franz Ackermann).
portraiture (Marlene Dumas, Margherita Manzelli)
the televisual (Eberhard Havekost)
merging of art deco and the cybernetic (Haluk Akakçe).
Abstraction as techno-organic topography (Udomsak Krisanamis),
cartoon iconography (Arturo Herrera),
geometry of architecture with flatness of the picture plane (Kevin Appel).”
Doctrine of pluralism – painting as a non-discipline.
59. Raises a number of questions:
How useful is this pluralism as a means to think about painting (or
contemporary art)?
Do painters have something in common simply because they paint?
What about the particular sensuous, performative or theatrical
qualities of the medium?
What are the ‘limit conditions’ of the frame?
Richard Wright Not titled, 2005
69. Altered States of Paint
5 July 2008 - 7 September 2008
Applying Painting at the Edge of the World taxonomy:
photograph (Till Gerhard),
a walk through a city (???????????????????),
club culture-inspired (Neil Clements ),
applied directly to a wall (Rabiya Choudhry).
portraiture (Jutta Koether; Rabiya Choudhry)
the televisual (Andreas Dobler)
merging of art deco and the cybernetic (Andreas Dobler).
Abstraction as techno-organic topography (Angela de la Cruz),
cartoon iconography (Jutta Koether; Rabiya Choudhry),
geometry of architecture with flatness of the picture plane (Andreas Dobler ).
70. Altered States of Paint applied a more ideosyncratic approach; one based on observation of a shared haptic
sensuousness.
Paintings that are united by psychedelic content or psych ‘visonary’ approach.
Painting is not boundary-less, it can be examined by comparing like-with-like...
77. Ellen Munro
The Object Is Not Important As Long As There Is (2007)
Kate Owens
Affair at Styles (pink & blue) (2008) Travelling Gallery,
Editor's Notes
Nader Ahriman
Der Hund lügt nicht 1997
Hyper realism vs cynical realism?
All the painters were involved in a process of self-mythologisation.
The all got involved in film-making
e.g. Search and Destroy by David Salle
Heavy Burschi [Heavy Guy] (1991) brings together many of the defining themes of Kippenberger?s practice, both in terms of media and its process of production. Kippenberger asked an assistant to make paintings based on images from all his catalogues, but he was unsatisfied with the finished canvases. He ordered all fifty-one paintings to be destroyed, but first had each photographed, reprinted to its original size and framed, exhibiting them together, with the remnants of the paintings in a skip, as a single installation.
Sculptures like “Capri at Night” (1982) (Ford’s affordable take on a European sports car, rolled in oats, painted and signed) Kippenberger is taking shots at a peer as the sculpture was a “droll riff on the highly serious brown paintings embedded with straw by Anselm Kiefer.” We might be laughing at Kippenberger’s work, but at points we are laughing as a response to confrontational audacity.
“In the rich man’s house”, Diogenes of Sinope is reputed to have said, “there is no place to spit but in his face.” History’s original Cynic might have found himself at home at the opening of “The Opening” at Simon Lee Gallery, confronted with the sight of Merlin Carpenter daubing a blank canvas with the legend: “Simon Lee utter swine”.
The exhibition is the fifth in a series of shows by Carpenter in which the paintings are produced during the private view – although in the press release, Carpenter leaves open the hypothetical possibility that the canvases might simply remain blank (“If the works are painted …”).
Most of the resulting paintings took the form of slogans – alongside the swinish assessment of his host, others read “CUNTS”, “Bad BEUYS”, “KUNST”, “STOP ART”, “BANKS ARE BAD”, “KUNST?=? Kapital”, “Beuys BADBOI” and “DESTROY NEO LIBERAL”. The only exceptions were a delicate Ab-Ex splash and a Beuys-like black cross. From accounts of previous instalments in the series it appears Carpenter’s work has entered a more classical phase – none of the paintings ran onto the wall space, as was the case at Overduin and Kite in Los Angeles last year, nor was there the coup of painting them from a moving car, as at the Christian Nagel-organised Mercedes Benz showroom event in Berlin in May 2008.
TULIP MANIA???
While British house prices took six years to double at the start of this century, contemporary art managed it in just one, 2006-07. (Over the same period, old masters went up by just 7.6 per cent and British 17th to 19th century watercolours actually lost value.)
Contemporary art in the emerging economies did even better.
The value of its sales in China increased by 983 per cent in one year (2005-06). In Russia they rose 2,365 per cent in five years (2000-05), while its stock market increased by “only” about 300 per cent…
The Chinese painter Zhang Xiaogang saw his work appreciate 6,000 times, from $1,000 to $6m (1999-2008); work by the American artist Richard Prince went up 60 to 80 times (2003-2008). The German painter Anselm Reyle was unknown in 2003; you could have picked up one of his stripe paintings for €14,000. Now he has a studio with 60 assistants turning them out for about €200,000 each.”
"The freedom with which these artists mix classical and popular art-historical sources, kitsch and traditional images, archetypal and personal fantasies, constitutes a rejection of the concept of progress per se. . . . It would seem that, without a specific idea of progress toward a goal, the traditional means of valuing and validating works of art are useless. Bypassing the idea of progress implies an extraordinary freedom to do and to be whatever you want. In part, this is one of the most appealing aspects of "bad" painting - that the ideas of good and bad are flexible and subject to both the immediate and the larger context in which the work is seen." - "'Bad' Painting" catalogue.
“With the apparent resurgence of painting at the dawn of the new millennium, it has become clear that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Rather than presenting a conservative and nostalgic celebration of the tradition of painterly practice, Painting at the Edge of the World unites a wide range of global artists whose diversified styles address its continued relevance at the beginning of the new century. In light of Yve-Alain Bois' suggestion that any contemporary renewal of this medium will be found in unexpected places, the exhibition looks at these unlikely artists in unlikely places as it examines the multiple permutations of contemporary painting practice manifested across the globe. Clearly, this medium is no longer bound by the traditional categories of abstraction, figuration, portraiture, or landscape, or even by its conventional definition as paint on canvas.”
Walker Art Center
FEBRUARY 10-MAY 6, 2001PAINTING AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
“photograph (Andreas Gursky),
a walk through a city (Francis Alÿs),
club culture-inspired (Jim Lambie),
applied directly to a wall (Richard Wright, Franz Ackermann).
portraiture (Marlene Dumas, Margherita Manzelli)
the televisual (Eberhard Havekost)
merging of art deco and the cybernetic (Haluk Akakçe).
Abstraction as techno-organic topography (Udomsak Krisanamis),
cartoon iconography (Arturo Herrera),
geometry of architecture with flatness of the picture plane (Kevin Appel).”
Doctrine of pluralism – painting as a non-discipline.
Painting is boundary-less… it can be anything….
We can identify lots of tendencies within painting –
Tactics
Practices
Strategies
Is this an example of endgame painting or are we looking at and extension of painting into the realms of design? Depends on the artist…..
Krebber –
Among his most recent work is a series of fourteen canvases, all of about equal size. The paintings, which are not paintings in any traditional sense of the word, take as their support a stretch of pre-printed, shop-bought fabric. Over the readymade printed motif, Krebber has painted the simple geometric shape of a diamond. Completed in various shades of off-white, the positioning of the shape is sometimes symmetrical, sometimes not. The use of fabric is an interesting addition to the artist's work and one that makes reference to influential German artists such as Sigmar Polke and Rosemarie Trockel, who have similarly employed found and manufactured textiles.
With Chaimoovicz you see the use of tableau constructions that takes us off the conventional canvas.
Nova Popularna LPIn May 2003, artists Lucy McKenzie and Paulina Olowska created Nova Popularna, a temporary illegal speakeasy/artist salon in Warsaw, Poland, where they held a series of concerts and events each week.This record is a document of that experience; it is a compilation of the bands that played there, and at the same time offers some visual artifacts in its cover art. The two women had designed the space's interior, and the entire bar is recreated in the pop-up miniature bar that opens from the record's gatefold sleeve (below). The music ranges from electro to prepared piano to cabaret vocals. Bands include: Donateller, Marcel Dutka, Mathilde Rosier, Bianca Glazebrook. Vinyl LP with full-color gatefold sleeve and pop-up centerfold.
Plenty of painting around that celebtrates sensuousness and sensuality, much of it is by women.
This is very significant as painting was always held to be a very male domain and was largely abandoned by more radical feminists in the 70s for this reason.
Klimik - Marie Antoinette Out For A Walk At Her Petite Hermitage, France, 1750, 200
Viscocity of the medium,
Doesn’t have to relate to celebrity or remain on the stretcher, e.g. (next slide)…..
German artist Katharina Grosse,The artist was born in 1961 and lives and works between Düsseldorf and Berlin. She is one of the most successful internationally known painters of the last generation.Katharina Grosse appropriates the exhibition space by emphasising and at the same time transcending its architectural structure through the force of her colours and the energy of spray painting. Captured by the unrestrainable desire - or instinct – to modify and alter the environment, Katharina Grosse gives every space a new aesthetic configuration and a new cognitive value.Her space visions are not meant to be strokes of lightning – like some avulse enrapturing event – but rather logic consequences of an experienced life that comes to light and that cannot be caught in all its stages. It is as if the artist was constantly pursuing her work, always behind it. Grosse carries on a dialogue and chases the painting matter to express her vision; to extend her existence (this is why her work is close to performance); to spontaneously translate her mental processes (this is why she uses spray painting); to go beyond the experience of reality.
Franz Ackermann, 'Your Cities are Almost Mine', 2009Wall painting, pencil on paper, 216 x 262.5 inches [left]
Franz Ackermann, Installation view TERMINALMeyer Riegger, Karlsruhe, Germany [right]
Franz Ackermann defines the presence of a concrete space with the illusionist means of painting, hereby making the painting into a constitutive part of the actual way the space is experienced. In this he is pursuing an intervention in appearance and reality, as one can witness in heterotopous places. At this point the artist assesses a link to a terminal, which possesses no specific function as a real, existing place outside of its efficacy.
Katie Orton did Sculpture
Rabiya Choudhry did painting
THIS IS BECAUSE THEIR PRACTICES ARE OFTEN CONCERNED WITH OR INFORMED BY COLLABORATION AND PARTICIPATION
BY A DEEP INVOLVEMENT IN THE DIY ASPECTS OF THE ARTWORLD
There’s also a tendency to think about how paintings are objects and how they circulate – to examine the conditions of distribution. E.g. next slide…..
Alÿs is probably best known in the UK for the exhibition he mounted at the National Portrait Gallery last year, of over 200 amateur portraits of Saint Fabiola, collected from auctions and thrift stores, all based on a lost 19th-century original by Jean-Jacques Henner. The collection is still touring the world.
Saint who? I’ve canvassed half a dozen Catholics I know and not one of them has ever heard of Saint Fabiola. Yet, over at the National Portrait Gallery, Belgian artist Francis Alÿs has created an installation which consists of 300 images of Saint Fabiola in what must be the most unexpected, original, and thoughtful exhibition of contemporary art this year.
For the last 15 years, Alÿs has haunted flea markets and junk shops in Britain, continental Europe, Mexico and the United States searching for pictures of the saint. He doesn’t care who made the work, or whether it is oil on canvas, needlework, shells, gesso, enamel, carved wood, or ceramic. Very few of the works in this show look as though they were painted by professional artists, and among the amateurs only a handful rise to the level of competency. What they all have in common is that they are based on a single image: the original painting, now lost, which the minor French painter Jean-Jacques Henner exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1885.
Alÿs is probably best known in the UK for the exhibition he mounted at the National Portrait Gallery last year, of over 200 amateur portraits of Saint Fabiola, collected from auctions and thrift stores, all based on a lost 19th-century original by Jean-Jacques Henner. The collection is still touring the world.
Saint who? I’ve canvassed half a dozen Catholics I know and not one of them has ever heard of Saint Fabiola. Yet, over at the National Portrait Gallery, Belgian artist Francis Alÿs has created an installation which consists of 300 images of Saint Fabiola in what must be the most unexpected, original, and thoughtful exhibition of contemporary art this year.
For the last 15 years, Alÿs has haunted flea markets and junk shops in Britain, continental Europe, Mexico and the United States searching for pictures of the saint. He doesn’t care who made the work, or whether it is oil on canvas, needlework, shells, gesso, enamel, carved wood, or ceramic. Very few of the works in this show look as though they were painted by professional artists, and among the amateurs only a handful rise to the level of competency. What they all have in common is that they are based on a single image: the original painting, now lost, which the minor French painter Jean-Jacques Henner exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1885.
Antwerp-born artist’s actions and performances.
Alÿs has lived in Mexico City since the mid 1990s,
Dundee Contemporary Arts
Altered States of Paint
5 July 2008 - 7 September 2008
Applying Painting at the Edge of the World taxonomy:
photograph (Till Gerhard ),
a walk through a city (???????????????????),
club culture-inspired (Neil Clements ),
applied directly to a wall (Rabiya Choudhry ).
portraiture (Jutta Koether; Rabiya Choudhry)
the televisual (Andreas Dobler )
merging of art deco and the cybernetic (Andreas Dobler ).
Abstraction as techno-organic topography (Angela de la Cruz),
cartoon iconography (Jutta Koether; Rabiya Choudhry),
geometry of architecture with flatness of the picture plane (Andreas Dobler ).
Does this work?
e.g. large painting by Angela de la Cruz
I wrote a catalogue text for Open Eye Club
Worked with these artists:
Viscocity of the medium, use of tableau constructions in both cases as well.
Nova Popularna LPIn May 2003, artists Lucy McKenzie and Paulina Olowska created Nova Popularna, a temporary illegal speakeasy/artist salon in Warsaw, Poland, where they held a series of concerts and events each week.This record is a document of that experience; it is a compilation of the bands that played there, and at the same time offers some visual artifacts in its cover art. The two women had designed the space's interior, and the entire bar is recreated in the pop-up miniature bar that opens from the record's gatefold sleeve (below). The music ranges from electro to prepared piano to cabaret vocals. Bands include: Donateller, Marcel Dutka, Mathilde Rosier, Bianca Glazebrook. Vinyl LP with full-color gatefold sleeve and pop-up centerfold.
Painting as a ‘car crash’ – a happy (or perhaps not so happy) accident.
Claes Oldenberg ‘London Knees’ 1967 in foreground
Ellen Munro and Kate Owens both did painting,
Kate went to do a Sculpture Masters at the RCA – I selected her for Becks Futures and for PILOT in London
Ellen often facilitates participation based works
Both were in Young Athenians in Athens Biennial 2007