Faster Painting! Move! Move!” Part 2
Brandl and Bullock in Europe
This entry: “Faster Painting! Move! Move!” Part 2.
(Mark Staff Brandl and Leonard Bullock continue their debate about contemporary painting, as seen in a brace of shows in Basel, Switzerland and nearby locales in Europe.)
......
LB: I’m afraid I can’t agree with your enjoyment of any linear Brice Marden. In the company of De Kooning and Newman the Marden looked decorative.
Brice Marden painting.
MSB: Whereas I see them as subtle and refined, purposefully slow.
LB: Hyper-refined! ... Listen before we begin to sound like film critics Siskel and Ebert...
MSB: Hey – I like that comparison! Let’s pick up on that later.
LB: Returning to discussing the whole program of exhibitions, I can’t be alone in the feeling that, to an extent, the shows in Basel comprising Painting on the Move had been decided by the same committee system that sets the standard, tried and true, many a year at the Rose Parade or the Euro-song contest. Curators of these “new painting” exhibits have smoothed any potential differences with the powers beyond themselves. Accomplishing all such requirements seems to have been a challenge. However, although apologies and appeasements abound, painting does come forward showing that it still breathes, palpitates and conceives — a spectacle for those captious enough to believe something as intrinsic to culture as painting could evaporate over a decade, a generation, or even a century.
Luc Tuymans painting
MSB: Leonard, you were describing the terribly boring committee-consensus form of so many painting shows. That's quite true of a large amount of the exhibitions mounted today in all media. Sophistic consensus-reasoning is ruining art. However, a completely different question arose in There is No Final Picture – Painting after 1968, the show at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst. It had the toughest grouping, an emphasis on paintings which while often wonderful, were trying their best to be the last painting, or the first. This was a perfect summation of the Late Modernism under study here. Highlights were the handful of works not trying to do this, though. One such was Niele Toroni’s Empreintes de pinceau n. 50, répétées à intervalles réguliers de 30 cm, 1975. On another note, Luc Tuymans seems to be all the talk, but looking at his K.Z. (Concentration Camp), 1998... I had a long private talk with him recently and found him to be a delightfully intriguing thinker... Nevertheless, I don’t always "get it" in his approach (or others borrowing from him) — dry, industrial, quasi-“bad painting” realism . Seems far too concocted, an appeal to trendy curatorial conceits, if I may speak so overly general. (Some of his work I actually enjoy a lot.)
Niele Toroni painting
LB: This is easily the most polemical of all the shows and interested me more than the Kunstmuseum’s exhibition. Although the title makes an attempt to evade the endgame gambit, the results “read” THEORY and many of the usual end-of-art tactics are in whining abundance. In some cases here these works have only nominal association with painting concerns. Why, otherwise would Sherrie Levine be represented, other than the tale of the sale...?. Thankfully, the claims of the subtitle-cum-“working theme” are tangential to some paintings here. One would be confounded in an attempt to recognize “final picture” issues in the works of Herbert Brandl, Raoul De Keyser or Tuymans, who you mentioned. They seem more readable as eclectic, hybrid versions of “tradition.”
Gerhard Richter has famously ridiculed the posturing of philosophy disguised as art critique and is duly punished here by tepid representation. Sigmar Polke is also given only token presence in an uncharacteristically drab felt collage, more object than painting. From across the room it might be mistaken for one of Joseph Beuys’ objects. It isn’t necessary to see the “proper” ratio proportionally of a currently influential artist in every show, but this slights the artists by displaying lesser works.
To Be Continued ........
LB: I’m afraid I can’t agree with your enjoyment of any linear Brice Marden. In the company of De Kooning and Newman the Marden looked decorative.
Brice Marden painting.
MSB: Whereas I see them as subtle and refined, purposefully slow.
LB: Hyper-refined! ... Listen before we begin to sound like film critics Siskel and Ebert...
MSB: Hey – I like that comparison! Let’s pick up on that later.
LB: Returning to discussing the whole program of exhibitions, I can’t be alone in the feeling that, to an extent, the shows in Basel comprising Painting on the Move had been decided by the same committee system that sets the standard, tried and true, many a year at the Rose Parade or the Euro-song contest. Curators of these “new painting” exhibits have smoothed any potential differences with the powers beyond themselves. Accomplishing all such requirements seems to have been a challenge. However, although apologies and appeasements abound, painting does come forward showing that it still breathes, palpitates and conceives — a spectacle for those captious enough to believe something as intrinsic to culture as painting could evaporate over a decade, a generation, or even a century.
Luc Tuymans painting
MSB: Leonard, you were describing the terribly boring committee-consensus form of so many painting shows. That's quite true of a large amount of the exhibitions mounted today in all media. Sophistic consensus-reasoning is ruining art. However, a completely different question arose in There is No Final Picture – Painting after 1968, the show at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst. It had the toughest grouping, an emphasis on paintings which while often wonderful, were trying their best to be the last painting, or the first. This was a perfect summation of the Late Modernism under study here. Highlights were the handful of works not trying to do this, though. One such was Niele Toroni’s Empreintes de pinceau n. 50, répétées à intervalles réguliers de 30 cm, 1975. On another note, Luc Tuymans seems to be all the talk, but looking at his K.Z. (Concentration Camp), 1998... I had a long private talk with him recently and found him to be a delightfully intriguing thinker... Nevertheless, I don’t always "get it" in his approach (or others borrowing from him) — dry, industrial, quasi-“bad painting” realism . Seems far too concocted, an appeal to trendy curatorial conceits, if I may speak so overly general. (Some of his work I actually enjoy a lot.)
Niele Toroni painting
LB: This is easily the most polemical of all the shows and interested me more than the Kunstmuseum’s exhibition. Although the title makes an attempt to evade the endgame gambit, the results “read” THEORY and many of the usual end-of-art tactics are in whining abundance. In some cases here these works have only nominal association with painting concerns. Why, otherwise would Sherrie Levine be represented, other than the tale of the sale...?. Thankfully, the claims of the subtitle-cum-“working theme” are tangential to some paintings here. One would be confounded in an attempt to recognize “final picture” issues in the works of Herbert Brandl, Raoul De Keyser or Tuymans, who you mentioned. They seem more readable as eclectic, hybrid versions of “tradition.”
Gerhard Richter has famously ridiculed the posturing of philosophy disguised as art critique and is duly punished here by tepid representation. Sigmar Polke is also given only token presence in an uncharacteristically drab felt collage, more object than painting. From across the room it might be mistaken for one of Joseph Beuys’ objects. It isn’t necessary to see the “proper” ratio proportionally of a currently influential artist in every show, but this slights the artists by displaying lesser works.
To Be Continued ........
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