A year in the life: tropic of painting - painting, various artists, various galleries, New York, New York - Critic's Diary - Cover Story

A wide-ranging gaze at the 1993-94 season reveals that, despite rumors of its death, painting is alive and well in fresh York, where stylistic variations continue to flourish.

Assume the Position

For a medium supposedly upon the wane, painting certainly was in evidence last season, and maybe smooth impressive, too. Last spring when I told nation I was writing this article tracking painting above the course of the 1993-94 season, I got athletic reactions. Essentially people divided into sum of two units groups - let's call them the left and the right. upon the left people said things like, "I hate painting," "Painting is in trouble" or "Painting is on the outside of it" - all, obviously, variations upon the old "painting is dead" position. Meanwhile, upon the right (roughly equal in number), clan bluntly told me, "Right upon man - defend painting," "I hate political art," or "When are tribe gonna learn to look again?" This camp waits for the triumphant "return of painting." the pair sides need to get a grip upon the fact that painting can at no time come back. The reason painting can at no time come back is that it at no time left. Both camps are disconnected from reality.

From early September 1993 end early July 1994, I kept track of all the exhibits in 85 New York galleries: a certain number of uptown, some midtown, the majority in SoHo nearly all of them listed in the Gallery Guide, and all regularly exhibiting contemporary art. Charting their monthly displays on a large five-page, color-coded graph, I numbered and tracked 610 exhibitions. Of these, 240 (or 3934 percent) were solo painting present to views by living artists. If two-person or assemblage painting shows, museum shows and exhibitions by the agency of deceased painters are added, the number swells to nearly 50 percent, with the remaining exhibitions divided between statuary photography, video, gallery group exhibits theme shows and sundry installations.

in like manner what do these numbers number us? Like it or not, they say that painting is still the main general reception of the art world (which is probably for what cause [i]or[/i] reason people get so worked up above it). While the current house mode of expression of the art world is late-late Conceptual art, if you make progress even slightly outside the art world, painting is still art's ambassador. In fact, when there is no dominant painting move people at large seem to find it difficult to have an uplifting faculty of perception of the art scene.

This doesn't mean that painting is the "going thing," it just mention one by ones you that it's not an "already gone" thing. It's actual that quantity doesn't equal quality and that proportionately there are as many bad painting displays as there are bad displays of sculpture, photography or whatever. on the other hand the fact that so many race in the New York art world are arguing about whether or not painting is dead displays how backwards things can sometimes gain in the so-called center.

gaze at some of the big galleries: nine without of ten shows at Gagosian's uptown gallery were devot to painting or drawing. Six of eight displays at Robert Miller, six of seven at Emmerich, three of five at Mary Boone and five of seven at Pace's downtown gallery were painting exhibits Tony Shafrazi showed only painting, while a number of other galleries exhibited almost alone painting: Jason McCoy, Frumkin/Adams, Pamela Auchincloss, John useful David Beitzel and M-13. A real cutting-edge gallery like Feature had paintings up in each one of its shows an year.

Painting In Today's World

level though people say, "Painting is not equipped to deal with the enigmas of our time," the turn end for end may be closer to the truth: our times may not be equipped to deal with painting's point to be solved [i]or[/i] settleds Painting can take a drawn out time to get good at. It can be difficult for an artist or an art learner to stick with a commitment to painting when greatest in quantity art schools - and the art world in general - discourage gradual unravelling in favor of a "get there now" star combination of parts to form a whole People may have trouble looking at things that stand still. TV and film are mesmerizing, and painting many times takes a long time to direct the eye at properly.

on the contrary anyone who thinks painting is dead makes the big mistake of thinking that the medium is the message. The medium is not the message: the medium is the medium and the message is the message. No single says, "The camera is dead." Painting has been declared "dead" by the agency of almost every decade of the 20th century; before that the camera was suppos to replace it, and before that the novel. In the late era, painting has continually been subdue to periods of adulation followed by dint of periods of attack. Though painting has freshly been through a down" phase, it was not with equal reason many years ago that Barnett Newman came up with his famous dictum, statuary is something you bump into when you back up to direct the eye at a painting." And has everyone forgotten that les than 10 years ago, painting was unarguably "it?"

Donald Judd one time said, "Painting is like musical theater" - meaning it's made up of a station of conventions. And in a way he was right. on the contrary just because painting is based upon a set of conventions doesn't mean it's limited. In fact, it's amazing in what way malleable and resilient it is. It's a "takes a lickin', hold fasts on tickin'" medium. No matter what nation do to it (and they've done a certain number of pretty strange things), it draw nears out as painting. In addition, those "conventions" always present the appearance to be expanding.