Painting was proclaimed dead Essay Example For Students

Painting was proclaimed dead Essay Because of this, painting has had to constantly redefine itself, re-negotiating its terms of existence, as new understandings of what art is materialism from our collective consciousness. When the death of painting was discussed in the sass, there was a belief that all combinations had been tried. Douglas Crimp, whose ruminations on the end of painting expressed the feeling of the time, cites the black paintings of Ad Reinhardt (the last paintings anyone can make), the monotone and white paintings of Robert Raman and the mechanical, striped paintings of Daniel Burden as evidence that painting ad reached the end of the road. Crimp states It is but a matter of time before painting Will be seen for the pure idiocy that it is (Overwrote, n. D. ). Robert Raman became well known in spite of his unconventional approach to painting. Although his critics tried to fit his work into a variety Of categories, including minimalism, anti-form, process or conceptuality, they eventually admitted that none could be accurately applied to his art. He disagrees that his work is abstract, saying l dont abstract from anything. My work is involved with real visual aspects of what you really are looking at, whether its wood, or you see the mint, and the metal, and how its put together and how it works with the wall and how it works with the light (Adams, 2012), Robert Raman, Versions l, 1932, (detail) Raman, Orange Painting 1955-1959 Robert Ad Reinhardt Abstract Painting appears to be completely black, however upon closer inspection one begins to see that it is composed Of an almost imperceptible grid of nine squares, individualized by subtle variations in color. Closer examination reveals red hues in the squares at its corners, blue hues at the top and bottom of the vertical centre, and suggestions of green across its rational centre. Ad Reinhardt, Abstract Painting, 1963, Daniel Burden has been classified as an abstract minimalist and is best known tort using regular, contrasting colored stripes in order to integrate the painted surface with the architecture of historical or landmark buildings and structures. Daniel Burden, IF orange, 1992 Daniel Burden, Sans tire 7, 2005 His main concern is the scene of production, a way of presenting art and highlighting the process of making, thereby removing representation of anything and focusing entirely on the work itself. The work is site-specific installation and contains a context relevant to its setting, thereby removing the works autonomy. Art critic Roseland Krause attributes modern arts down-turn to Decamp and his ready-made. With Duchesss Fountain, conceptual art became the idea Of art as pure idea and lost touch With the medium. Painting and sculpture gave way to installation art which was full of ideas but void of technique, becoming an easy target for mainstream ridicule. Krause was drawn to the criticism of Clement Greenberg. Whose way of assessing how an art object works became a personal resource for her. She and fellow Greenberg Michael Fried would later break with the critic and with each other at various points in time, yet the commitment to formal analysis as the basis of serious criticism would remain for both of them. Decades after her first engagement with Greenberg Krause still used his ideas about an artworks medium as the means by which 5 he came to terms with post- art (Wolf, n. D,). Michael Fried states, In some ways was virtually apprenticed to (Clement Greenberg). Sought him out when was 19, and was reading him from my teens on. Coked at a lot of art with him. He had a great eye. Hes arguably the foremost art critic of the 20th century, and I learned a tremendous amount, While poetry and English literature were Frieds intended studies at Princeton, it was the writings of critic Clement Greenberg in Art News that drew Pried into the world of art and art criticism (Wolf, n. D. ). Vanessa Bisectors performances have been described as art, fashion, brilliant, terrible, evoca tive, provocative, disturbing, sexist, and empowering. They are also an excellent example of Conceptual Painting. Reproduction Businesses of Thomas Kinkade's Painting EssayThere is also a darker side to what appear to be innocuous subjects. Tammany has explored diverse and sensitive topics including the Holocaust, images from 9/1 1, the ambiguity of the Disney empire, the colonial history of his native Belgium, and the rise Of multi-national corporations (Grinner, RL_d. ). Luck Tammany, TV Set, 1999, Oil on canvas One of Luck Tammany early influences was the 16th century artist known as II Greece, Who he believed painted in such a way as to confront the viewer and then disappear, a kind of retraction, and he felt there was an element of deconstruction present in the artists work. This could also be seen as a fairly accurate description of Tammany paintings, which show a reluctance to portray human images. Its not that they dont exist: they do: however they are often faced, partially erased or somehow deprived of identity. El Greece, it is assumed, was a very tall, thin character with a long head. There is a resemblance between his paintings and his being, You always project your own physicality upon the image. (Lock, Alicia Specter, 1996, p. 13). Tammany narratives are over-shadowed by a mood specific to each painting, and he uses deletion rather than inclusion to encourage the viewer to complete the image themselves, referring to these deliberate suspensions of visual logic as points of entry into his paintings (Lock, Alicia Specter, 1996, p. 97). Rather than offering a clear narrative, Tammany compels the viewer to use their own experience to make sense of the scarce imagery he provides, which has, by their own admission, left some viewers feeling uneasy (Mooney, 2008). Clement Greenberg summed up contemporary painting accurately when he stated the following: The essence of Modernism lies in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself ? not in order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence. Modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations that constitute the tedium of painting- the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties Of pigment were treated by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Modernist painting has come to regard these same limitations as positive factors that are to be acknowledged openly (Klein, 2005, p. 822). Whether its conceptual art that uses paint as its medium, conceptual painting which uses no paint at all, or the seemingly unfinished paintings of Luck Tammany which invite the viewer to complete the narrative themselves, there can be no bout that painting is very much alive and well. Some forms of painting may be unrecognizable compared to those practiced one hundred years ago or more, but as history has proved repeatedly, painting has and will always adapt itself to the shifting consciousness of humanity. It will continue to integrate and reconfigure itself to stand alongside the myriad media and conceptual possibilities, as painting is the foundation of visual language since Paleolithic man first began drawing on cave walls with charcoal and dust more than 15,000 years ago. Reference List Adams, D. (2012). Robert Raman White paint, not white paintings.