CS Statement
In the beginning of the year, my interest in painting relied solely on looking at and referencing to the practices of artists who had worked with the concept of painting and integrated it with the use of space. Starting off with the "limits of painting," such as its structure, dimension, technique, and the problematic of its ambivalent nature, I had found it difficult to locate painting’s position in the contemporary art world, not to mention clarifying its definition.
It is widely accepted that painting was originated from the illusionary, be it the traces of shadow or the pure imagination of men; that is to say, painting as a physical object is regarded as the connection between the imaginary and the real – it is representational. We see numerous examples in the history of painting: from the Renaissance period when painters had to acquire realistic techniques to portray the holy, to the capturing of light of the Impressionists, or the recreation of dreams of the Surrealists. All of these periods and movements in the history of painting are distinct from one another not only because the historians say so, but the different treatments and techniques involved in the making of the images, and, more importantly, may I suggest, the treatments and techniques in practising painting.
There are many purposes of paintings: they can be depictions of the physical world, reflections of the beautiful, praising of the spiritual, metaphors of the other, or expressions of thoughts. It almost goes without saying that painting as a medium of artistic expression is inclusive of relating to its point in time and referencing to its cultural trends. Before modern times, the practice of painting was largely judged by the level of craftsmanship, i.e. the ability to imitate or portray. The appearance of abstract painting in the early twentieth century comprised the crucial step in the recognition of painting's demise as craft and its instant rebirth as idea.
Paul Cézanne reinvented painting by giving it a new meaning, not by the advance of craft. His use of twisted perspective (or non-perspective), bold black outlines and brushstrokes, and an expressive colour palette confronted with the tradition of painting. Taken as a central reference by many artists, among others Daniel Buren wrote in "Standpoint," a text of 1971:
One of the questions posed by Cézanne's work was: is it possible to eliminate the subject in painting and to manifest only painting as painted – or paint itself – that is, to show a painting without a history other than its own, without illusion, without representation of the beyond, without perspective, without a framework other than the one on which this painting is inscribed – its support? (qtd. in Armstrong 86)
These questions point out some of the foremost features one would use to identify a painting: the subject matter, and the framework. To interpret this clearer, we may regard what Cézanne calls "the subject in painting" as what I have explained earlier one of the purposes of painting; without this purpose, what we are left with painting is what Cézanne suggests "painting as painted – or paint itself." Therefore the tasks here are how to see painting as painted, and how does painting function without a framework other than its physical support.
Before going any further, I would like to clarify that the type of painting in discussion in this essay should not fall into the categorisation of being either representational or abstract, for that I see the representation of the mind in the paintings of Abstract Expressionism; the sort of painting I would like to discuss is the ones that consider painting as the subject of its practice, and therefore pose important questions about this particular practice. Numerous takes and attempts in the modernist era tried to reinvent painting, practitioners created paintings for the purpose of creating "painting as painted." To achieve this goal, many had largely abandoned traditional illusionism and developed other systems of communication in painting. For example, the use of collage replacing tones of colour and use of perspective; Piet Mondrian's attempts at establishing the universal linguistic value of his vertical/horizontal symbolism; Wassily Kandinsky's paradigmatic and syntagmatic conditions of pure colour as a language; and the list goes on. The craft reduced painting as painted resulted in the mere coating of a surface, yet redeemed when proved meaningful. In other words, the various founders of abstract painting hoped that through seriating or systematicising the practice, the idea would eventually be evident and then evaluated. Today, painting is discussed most often as an artefact of modernism – it remains as a hung picture on the wall – and therefore an object of dismissal rather than a medium of promise for speaking to contemporary issues. It seems that modernist paintings had failed to escape from the frameworks that they were set within. The frameworks that painting is based on are ironically also the limits set forth for painting.
What frameworks are painting dependent on and limited by? Is there any other way to see "painting as painted" without reducing to the purity and simplicity as merely a covered surface? The culmination of this practice is most apparent in the minimalist approach, such as monochrome and use of geometry. Earlier this year in the seminar presentation I introduced three major limits of painting and by ways of contrast to the minimalist explorations, gave examples of what seemed already exhausted could still be negotiated within: Jackson Pollock's action painting, whose part-to-whole relationship and unity suggests a new kind of autonomy, provokes painting with questions of its structure rather of its reduction. Daniel Dezeuze's cutting technique as opposed to the generalised industrial methods used by the minimalists demonstrates that painting as a discipline remains capable of sustaining technique as a measure of its thought and invention. Polly Apfelbaum's serial practices elaborate decisive ways of thinking through the work’s exposure, and thus open further questions of the relation of the work to its structure. It is through such articulations of seriate dispersion, not reduction, that the implications for painting as a medium are placed in question.
Now that we have ventured further into the realms of painting in the late twentieth century and contemporary times, one may be intrigued by the various forms and styles that painting takes, and be even more confused of what painting is. Within my research, I have encountered the difficulty in embracing the ideology of painting, for that the obsession surrounding it often results in a neglect of studio practice. Perhaps it would be easier to define what is not in order to get to the core of the ideology of painting. The artist group BMPT made a bold statement in the showing at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture in January 1967 by declaring "WE ARE NOT PAINTERS." This statement showed the artists' refusal of the terms of making, exhibition, and criticism through which the statement defines painting. The four members of BMPT – Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni – each practises a repetitive gesture deprived of any artistic base and wants to supply only what the work presents. Buren specifically makes the distinction between the practice of peinture (painting, act of painting) and that of the tableau (a covered surface, any pictorial dimension whatsoever). The emphasis on the departure of his practice – a concern for peinture – opens his work to its various adventures beyond the stretcher. When painting is free of the particular containment of the tableau, it becomes free to carry its problematic of masking and framing more directly into the world. Insofar most of the practices of painting I have mentioned in this essay, despite their contribution in the reinvention of painting, still set within the masking and the framing of a tableau. Buren's opposition to minimalist painting is that everything hung on the walls is dead; and if space (wall) in between works is to be considered, it should be considered as a work of art too. The history of painting which Buren's travails undertakes is a history of the real distances between the artworks hung on the line in museums. Buren's practice has put forth is the social and institutional framework of painting which we have not disused.
Being heavily influenced by the writings of Louis Althusser, Buren believes that every act is political. As an artist, he also advocates his works in the form of writing. In an accompanying essay to an exhibition of his painting at Yvon Lambert Gallery in early 1971 titled "Critical Limits," Buren's interest in the Althusserian notion of a "theoretical practice" could be found evident[1]; yet for him the act of painting precedes writings and goes beyond them. It is not surprising that I find similarities in the treatment of Buren's peinture and Althusser's ideology. In "On Ideology" (1971) Althusser gives at least three definitions of ideology: 1) it is a system of representation that has no history of its own; 2) it is a matter of the lived relation between men and their world, it is imaginary; 3) it has a material existence in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices. It is to my belief that Buren refers "the act of painting" to a practice of art, not a medium of art. Therefore, while the modernists try to analyse the formal properties of painting, Buren refuses to clearly define painting by suggesting that it should only be observed without a reference to any metaphysical scheme; he believes that each work is an instance and this instance is the presence of an historical fact, though it does not have history on its own. This notion seems to suggest painting as an interchanging term for ideology which draws my attention to look at the more generic term – art.
I feel obliged to go back to my statement that "painting as a medium of artistic expression is inclusive of relating to its point in time and referencing to its cultural trends," what I would like to stress is this crucial yet often overlooked framework in the practice of painting/art – the cultural and institutional framework. As my assertion goes, I hold the opinion that this framework has always existed since the creation of art. However, this art, as we know it, only came into being in the bourgeoisie in the late eighteenth century, with the establishment of museums and gallery spaces. Art was then able to have a wider public audience and works of art may be conserved and exhibited. This social shift had a great significance in art; artists celebrated the liberation from working solely for the private and the accessibility to a public audience. But something else had also happened that accelerated the rebirth of painting – the naissance of the mechanical age.
Before the invention of photography and cinema, image-making had been dependent on the manual skills of men. However, with the introduction of these new media as a result of modernisation, much labour had been replaced by machines, hence painter by camera. This threat to painting as the dominant form of representation forced painters to focus more on the artistic/cultural values that painting inherited rather than the technical elements in representation. The awareness of the cultural challenge of industrialisation prompted a re-composite of the ideas of painting. Different from the artists I have discussed above, Marcel Duchamp's adaptation was to abandon painting altogether by appropriating readymades as works of art. He believes what is shown on a canvas will always be an illusion. The only way is to show the object itself. This "reinvention" is not appreciated by Buren. In "Standpoints" (1971) Buren argues that the influence Duchamp's readymades have on a number of artistic attempts makes the art sterile and regressive. I couldn't agree more when I first read this, for that any suggestion of moving away from the exhausted limits of painting into another space is a denial of painting's capacity to reconsider its own structure. However, Thierry de Duve in "Readymade and the Tube of Paint" (1986) argues that the readymades belong to the history of painting despite their three-dimensional appearance and qualities. Firstly, he proposes that the idea of abstract art came from painting, because "it was in painting that this self-referential striving for purity became both the exclusive object of esthetic theory and the all-encompassing subject matter of practice" (111). Then he references Duchamp's statement at the Symposium on the Art of Assemblage (1961): "Since the tubes of paint used by the artists are manufactured and ready-made products we must conclude that all paintings in the world are 'readymades aided' and also works of assemblage" (Duchamp 142). Finally, he suggests that it is either parody or irony that occupies the author and spectator, yet both would take the society at large into account.
Indeed, looking at the development of painting from this perspective – as ideology – it seems inevitable that it should evolve into readymade, or appropriation art. According to Althusser that "ideology is a 'representation' of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real condition of existence" (152); therefore, to my understanding, appropriation connects each individual to the society by dint of awareness. A bottle-stand exhibited signifies the industrialisation of art, this ideology brings about the awareness in the way we respond to art in relation to the world we live in. It appears to me as though that the visible formal elements of a work have been taken for granted, and what stimulates more seems to be the invisible impact in the psychic. Though I do not disagree with the idea that an object has its own history, I am not convinced that appropriation is the most powerful method. To my opinion, the readymades still remain in an institutional setting, comfortably protected by the gallery walls – isolated and occult.
If art should relate to its cultural setting, it shall be able to relate to a wider public outside of the confines of museum walls. Mechanical revolution not only influenced the practice of art, it also blurred the boundaries of private/public spaces. Explications in "The City in Pieces" (1996) by Victor Burgin serve as good references to the psychological analyses of space. Our perception of space changes constantly depending on the situations we are put in, resulting in a change of the concept of space. For example, the division between inside and outside becomes less definite when we are in a building made of steel and glass. In a world where such divisions are obscure, how to connect oneself to the society and how to make this ideology possible has become considerably important.
In the course of the Reading Group meetings, I was introduced to Jane Rendell's Art and Architecture (2006), in which she discusses a specific kind of practice that operates outside of the galleries' physical limits. Rendell locates this specific kind of practice in the ambiguous place between art and architecture – in spatial, temporal, and social terms. She explains that art and architecture are often differentiated in terms of their relationship to "function" – while architecture responds to social needs in giving shelter, "art is 'functional' in providing certain kinds of tools for self-reflection, critical thinking and social change" (4). This kind of public art that makes art functional is termed by Rendell as "critical spatial practice." I have found it very helpful in contextualising the artists I have been looking at, whose works comprised of visual components as well as social significance – Buren's in situ works on historic sites that challenge the conventional reluctance to the integration of "contemporary" and "traditional;" Katharina Grosse's explorations of painting dimension in relation to architectural space that transfigure our everyday experience; Michael Lin Min-Hong's floral installations that act as vernacular interactions where the hierarchical structures of painting, culture, museum practice, and social exchange are momentarily subverted... – all of these practices demonstrate the enormous freedom in addressing social issues from a painting visual perspective.
It has been a journey through the history of painting, the concepts of space, ideology and art, to the discovery of a specific practice. The goal is to acknowledge what has happened to painting and its relation to the society, and to hope to develop the scope for contextualising my own practice. It has strengthened my personal understanding of the creative dimension of an art that is responsive to a multicultural and ever-changing society.
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Note
[1] Buren's statement in the essay: "The following text results from a specific practice or work which is meant TO BE SEEN. This text is only the demonstration, presentation of this work, and not its theory. It could be considered as an illustration of the work in question. It is dictated by the work itself and is not an abstract and purified image of some future project." (Armstrong 87)
Bibliography
Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)." Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. London: Unwin Brothers Limited, 1971. 123-73.
Armstrong, Philip and Laura Lisbon. "As Painting: Problematics." Armstrong, Lisbon and Melville. 27-54.
Armstrong, Philip, Laura Lisbon, and Stephen Melville, eds. As Painting: Division and Displacement. Columbus: Wexner Center for the Arts, 2001.
Buren, Daniel. Five Texts. The John Weber Gallery & The Jack Wendler Gallery, 1973.
Burgin, Victor. "The City in Pieces." In/Different Spaces – Places and Memory in Visual Culture. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996.
"Daniel Buren." Armstrong, Lisbon and Melville. 85-9.
De Duve, Thierry. "The Readymade and the Tube of Paint." Artforum: May, 1986. 110-21.
Duchamp, Marcel. "A propos of Readymades." Salt Seller; The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Michael Lin. Ed. Ivy Cooper. Contermorary Art Museum St. Louis, 2004.
Rendell, Jane. Art and Architecture A Place Between. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006.
Ricoeur, Paul. "Althusser’s Theory of Ideology." Althusser A Critical Reader. Ed. Gregory Elliott. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. 44-72.
Rosand, David. The invention of Painting in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Libellés : daniel buren, hui, Jane Rendell, katharina.grosse, Louis Althusser, marcel.duchamp, painting, Polly Apfelbaum, space, thierry.de.duve, Victor Burgin
@ the moment