Now Jane, I’m looking at these blogs searching for stuff to help me start painting. I’m looking to justify its manfacture in this time we live. I was forced to leave it, like a left handed person might be forced to use their right hand by social conditioning…..Paintings only remaining context is itself and I am looking so hard to disprove that. It seems the creation of images is just about healthy enough to continue making them in other media. So why dont the two quite join up anymore? Or do they and I’m in some kind of denial…………. Is your dual fusion the same elixior that I’m looking for. your thoughts?
posted on 2010-12-08 by Rob Turner
Rob very kindly posted this comment on my last posting #28 and I have been considering my response very carefully. So here it is:
Rob, I think painting is as relevant today as other media, more so in a way, because it is one of the few remaining media that merge the body and mind in a tangible extension of the self. To my mind that makes its context the whole of the human experience. Certainly, other media are compelling, but too often I come away from work feeling untouched, meaning I haven’t connected to what is human about the piece. The human aspect either wasn’t important to the artist or ‘conditioning’ has convinced the artist of its unimportance. I believe that tangible extension will become more and more important as time goes on.
I think people talk about the ‘death of painting’ because they can’t imagine anything new to do with it. I’ve struggled with the same issue, but you know what, I don’t really care if painting has been pronounced ‘dead’. I still go into the studio and am surprised by what happens, so I feel painting is anything but ‘dead’. I also see other artists working with paint in a vivacious way and I’m convinced it is still very alive. Just as ‘death of the author’ has been proven to be untenable, so has the ‘death of painting’.
Perhaps that is the question to explore in your return to painting; why don’t image-making and painting join comfortably anymore? I think it is a valid and important question. It’s kind of like asking, why don’t the body and expression join comfortably anymore? Both are good questions, pertinent to our time. I find it interesting that the body within art seems to have changed places with expression and is being used as a symbol to express, rather than some symbol being used to express the body.
When I was in London, I saw two exhibitions which were focused on body as symbol, one sculpture and one painting, both media espoused to be ‘dead’:
1. Rachel Kneebone at White Cube: http://www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/rk%202010/
These figures depart from literal depictions of the body, expressing feelings directly and viscerally.
And I would add to that, Kneebone used the body and body parts to symbolize expression. Using the body not as a vehicle of expression but as a readable symbol for what it is to express.
2. G.L. Brierley at Madder 139: http://www.madder139.com/exhibitions/past.html
Looking at painting always involves perception and interpretation, but Brierley’s convoluted pictures seem defined by their capacity to trigger pareidolia, a psychological phenomenon whereby a viewer recognizes shapes in abstract patterns.
These paintings were exquisitely crafted. And I think perhaps Brierley was poking fun at our propensity to see all bodies as overtly sexed and freakish. Her bodies were not the usual pleasure objects or objects of desire, but rather like stuffed toys for sex. Distorted body used to symbolize its own obsessions.
So now it’s back to you, Rob. What are your thoughts?
