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"We are literalists most of our lives. Presentness
is grace."
Michael Fried
Stop for a Moment - Painting as Presence is the last
exhibition in a series that started at Gävle Konstcentrum
in Sweden with Painting as a Place to Be and continued
at Proje4L in Istanbul with Painting as Narrative. All
three exhibitions investigate and make visible the multifarious
means used in contemporary 'painting proper', in an environment
where other means quite often seem to be more relevant
and viable in today's context. The artists in the exhibitions
are from the Nordic countries. The reasons for this were
not tied up with any ideas that there is or should be
a typically 'Nordic' scene within this medium (or any
other medium, for that matter). The selections were made
according to the curators' personal judgement, and do
not reflect any attempt to make a comprehensive survey
of the area, which would in any case be futile. We also
wanted to stop for a moment and pay enough attention and
give enough time to the process, and to avoid the situation
in which exhibitions are put together in a fast, flea-market
manner.
In the two previous exhibitions we concentrated on various
topics related to the possibilities of painting. The first
exhibition looked at the viability and possibility of
'abstract' painting, and the second focused on narrative
strategies. The question of painting's relevance, or lack
of it, comes up periodically. Rather than going too deep
into that discussion, there is a more pressing need to
concentrate on the positive aspects of this medium. Why
do people still paint? Why are paintings still looked
at?
Robert Storr, an artist, critic and curator, has analysed
the relevance of painting, saying that, instead of dying,
art forms fall into disuse or misuse. Recombination of
fragments of previous ways of thinking and doing, together
with a fresh understanding of the emerging social and
aesthetic reality, make it possible for genuinely new
conventions and new objectives for the medium to emerge.
Many of the surveys of contemporary painting have consisted
of works from the 'extended field of painting'. More often
than not, one has left these undoubtedly seminal exhibitions
wondering whether it was more a question of the curators'
or the events' will and quest for prestige than of the
artists' genuine efforts that led to the selection of
a wide variety of media under the umbrella term 'painting'.
The ever-accelerating speed of the artworld, the continuous
search after novelty, and the often futile attempts to
incorporate different developments have resulted in neglect
of traditional means - painting among them.
Justification for the use of different media is often
sought in curious places. Concentration on media-specificity
has often been the cornerstone of attempts to assert the
futility of painting. At the same time, it has not been
much more than just that. Other, perhaps sexier means
have received validation and prestige from their use -
never mind the crashing servers and clunky portals - of
new, more 'connecting' technologies. With painting it
has been enough to validate the work if the necessary
leap has been made out of the frames - be they literal,
contextual or economic. Extra spice has been added by
unfounded claims that something new is being done here
- the Obristian amnesia of the artworld surfaces once
again. An apposite comment on these 'extending' developments
was made by Robert Storr: "…What good is there in
painting pretending to be something else, in painting
competing - and invariably losing - with other media?
Meanwhile, painting by other means - computers or photography
- is not painting but painterly computer art or painterly
photography - while painting proper need only measure
up to the challenges it poses itself that is sufficient
- and exceedingly difficult."
The temporal specificity of painting, it being a slow
medium, is just one of the many qualities that have been
manifest in earlier exhibitions, and it comes to the fore
here too. Slowness - painting's static quality - is reflected
both in the artists' working processes, and equally importantly
in the viewing situation. According to Storr: "The
fact that the image is static is among its defining characteristics
- and its prime virtues - in a culture where most other
images move. It is the form that grants the viewer the
greatest autonomy, the form in which the viewer controls
time rather than the artist. When you've had enough of
looking at static images go to the movies or watch TV.
When you've had enough of those go and look at a painting.
There's room for both, appetite for both, need for both."
Many of the artists in the exhibition have been linked
to the neo-expressive tradition of the 1980s German scene.
Luckily these claims are unfounded. Artists' attitudes,
values and opinions concerning their role and the status
of painting could not be more opposed to the earnest pathos
of the Neue Wilde. While the German neo-expressionists
were overtly preoccupied with, and all too certain of
their genius, and of the works that reflected it, today's
painters look critically at their practice and can even
afford an occasional joke. This attempt to legitimise
and validate the use of certain media, by using vocabulary
grounded in ideals that are not so well suited to our
situation, could be avoided. It can be done by acknowledging
and accepting the hybridity of current reality and of
means of depicting it. In relation to painting, it is
worth coming back to the oft-quoted text by philosopher
of art and curator Yve-Alain Bois. According to him, painting's
vitality will only be tested once we are cured of our
mania and our melancholy (which he sees as defence mechanisms),
and once we again believe in our ability to act in history.
Bois' faith in the individual agent's power over history
might be overstated, but futile cries that painting, among
other things, might have reached its end are made over
and over again. Importantly, he notes that the desire
for painting remains, and this desire is not entirely
programmed by or subsumed into the market. For Bois, this
desire is the sole factor in the future possibility of
painting that is one of non-pathological mourning.
The Stop for a Moment exhibitions are attempts to promote
an attitude of respect. Respect in the sense that artists'
works do not function as illustrations of curators' attempts
to theorize. Who should we listen to, and where do our
priorities lie? Art historian Hubert Damisch has pointed
out a few relevant facts: "…It is still necessary
that the painter succeed in demonstrating to us that painting
is something we positively cannot do without, that it
is indispensable to us, and that it would be madness -
worse still, a historical error - to let it lie fallow
today." He continues by stating: "…The problem,
for whoever writes about it, should not be so much to
write about painting as to try to do something with it,
without indeed claiming to understand it better than the
painter does… to try to see a little more clearly, thanks
to painting, into the problems with which the writer is
concerned, and which are not only, not even primarily,
problems of painting."
In order to see 'more clearly' into artists' practice,
it is sometimes good to go back in time. Discussions about
and around painting have not really gone that far from
what was said in the heyday of modern painting, and certain,
almost rustic concepts, ideals and values still hold for
some. Let's look at one of them. Art historian Michael
Fried's concept of theatricality is useful in relation
to the various artists in the exhibition. Fried's ideals
and opinions about painting's position and role are a
long way from those shared by contemporary practitioners.
His categories and criteria can in any case be employed
in reverse. The things he sees as most abhorrent are in
fact those most valued by many of the artists in this
exhibition.
The article 'Art and Objecthood' was first published
in Artforum in 1967. In it Fried attacked Donald Judd
and Robert Morris and other Minimalists for being too
'literalist'. According to Fried, decadent literalist,
i.e. Minimal, art theatricalized the relationship between
the artwork and the viewer. For him the experience of
the true and authentic modernist artwork involved the
suspension both of objecthood and of the sense of duration
of time. One of the cardinal sins for Fried was literalist
works' time-based quality: the experience of such works
persisted in time. Literalist art was essentially a presentment
of endless, or indefinite, duration. The literalist preoccupation
with time - more precisely with the duration of the experience
- was paradigmatically theatrical. This preoccupation
marked the profound difference between literalist work
and modernist painting and sculpture. It was as though
one's experience of the latter had no duration, because
at every moment the work itself was wholly manifest. It
was this continuous , and entire presentness, amounting
to perpetual creation itself, to instantaneousness. For
Fried it was precisely this virtue of modernist works'
presentness and instantaneousness that made them defeat
theatre. It was above all the condition of painting and
sculpture of existing and constituting a continuous and
perpetual present. What we have been at pains to show
is just the opposite. Instead of freezing the moment,
it is vital to acknowledge the importance of time and
its use.
According to Fried, literalist art was the expression
of a general and pervasive condition. According to modernist
principles, Fried found it intolerable that art forms
could be mixed or that there were no clear categories
of painting, poetry or sculpture. Unitary 'Specific Objects',
in which the values of wholeness, singleness and invincibility
were manifest, were for Fried basically 'hollow'. Various
techniques, along with opposition to the idea that painting
should be this or that - that the only acceptable or relevant
way is to use the easel format - come to the fore with,
e.g. Jukka Korkeila's and John Kørner's works in
this exhibition. Besides painting, Kørner works
extensively with ceramics and installations. While his
paintings are usually shown in a traditional way, on the
wall - as in this exhibition - he likes to create environments
out of works in different media. He makes this clear in
the interview: "I believe in environments and want
to create spaces and situations where you are not in front
of a painting, but rather in an environment that includes
the architectural and institutional setting into which
the works are placed. It is important for me to make works
that have physical, bodily effects, so that this also
questions the roles of both the work of art and the viewer."
Fried did not share this belief. For him, the work of
art was supposed to compel conviction, and the primary
character of non-art was its relation to theatre. The
literalist sensibility was theatrical, because it was
concerned with the actual circumstances in which the viewer
encountered the literalist work. These instances were
situations that included the beholder, in which physical
participation became necessary. Writing about Minimal
works Fried pointed out the distancing character of these
pieces. The works confronted the viewers, and were in
her way. The instance became a total situation, even containing
the viewer's body.
The presence of literalist art had a theatrical effect
or quality - a kind of stage presence. It was aggressive
and obtrusive. Something is said to have presence when
it demands that the beholder take it into account and
take it seriously - when the fulfilment of that demand
consists simply in being aware of it. For Fried this situation
was akin to that of being in the presence of another person.
While the exhibition artists rely on, trust in and employ
the easel format, there also seems to be a need to test
out the limits. Jukka Korkeila's contribution includes
a wall painting combined with drawings, a development
which arose in response to the exhibition situation, not
as a reaction to outside wishes, needs or pressures. Quoting
Korkeila: "The idea came out of a bunch of random
impulses that set me thinking about whether painting directly
onto a wall is at all possible. The answer was a positive
experience. I got sufficient distance from conventional
rectangular painting, which often incorporates an element
of that feeling of anxiety linked with the shape. At the
same time, the painting process reverted to its original
model. It was an action that happened directly in the
space."
This detour outside of the frames should not stop us
from acknowledging the possibilities of traditional painting,
which we in any case concentrate on in this exhibition.
In the catalogue interviews, the artists refer to painting
both as an ultimate, limitless means of expression and,
at the other end, as a medium that gains its charm from
the fact that it is an inadequate means for communicating
things. Paintings act as projection screens for stories
and images from the subconscious and imagination - arenas
for moments from everyday or fictive memory. Fried thought
that the success, even the survival, of the arts had come
increasingly to depend on their ability to defeat theatre.
I prefer Tal R's version: "Painting is a zombie medium.
As a painter you are a little bit like a guy showing up
in a tiger suit at a techno party. So your dress code
is outdated, but you might still have the best moves on
the dance floor."
Kari Immonen
Robert Storr, 'On Painting', M'ARS , No. 1-2, 2001,
p. 14.
Ibid. p. 15.
Ibid.
Yve-Alain Bois, Painting as Model, MIT Press, 1993, p.
243.
Ibid. pp. 243-244.
Ibid. p. 255.
Ibid. p. 257.
Michael Fried, 'Art and Objecthood', Art in Theory 1900-1990,
eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Blackwell, Oxford,
1993, p. 832.
Ibid. pp. 823-824.
Ibid. p. 825.
Ibid. p. 827.
Ibid. p.830.
Catalogues:
Each of the three exhibitions will be accompanied by a
catalogue with introductory essay, artists interviews
and illustrations highlighting the multifaceted ways of
working with 'painting proper'. Catalogues from Painting
as Presence and Painting as Narrative are available and
the third publication Painting as Presence is forthcoming
in September.
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