THE ECONOMY OF PAINTING: NOTES ON THE VITALITY OF A SUCCESS MEDIUM | ISABELLE GRAW AT THE JEWISH MUSEUM

Isabelle Graw: The Economy of Painting: Notes on the Vitality of a Success Medium
The Jewish Museum

It’s always been foolish to say that “painting is dead,” though it has been through numerous crises, or that “painting is back,” an equally naïf statement which believes it reinstated to its historical prominence¹; however, presently speaking, it is unmistakable that in the last year painting has enjoyed an exuberance of being. From the hullabaloo of MoMA’s Forever Now, to Bob Nickas’ response at Anton Kern, even in the pleasant amount of painting at the New Museum’s triennial, Surround Audience, painting was present partout. This, of course, has brought about an anxiety: what does it mean? is anything new being said?  how is image production affected in a world run by .jpeg(s) and .png(s)? do contemporary art daily and e-flux control art? This order of questioning is par for the course at late, and, to this, a few critics and art historians have turned our attentions to an expanded notion of painting. (for the last question, simply turn to Betteridge’s Law)

At the Jewish Museum, Isabelle Graw presented some recent thoughts on painting in her lecture, The Economy of Painting: Notes on the Vitality of a Success Medium, which lent an ear to the history of the author, specifically the issue of an author’s presence in painting, working some of her images back to the Quattrocento and Pierro della Francesca’s frescoes. These frescoes, like much of art after them, or those which Graw sought to illustrate, allowed not only the thoughts of the author to persist through time, but the ghost of the author’s presence to actively be embodied in both the strokes of paint—color and line—and his planned, authored execution of the cappella maggiore in the Church of San Francisco at Arezzo. However, for all her talk on Hegel and the element of history binding together the absolute power of an artist’s work, it fell to wonder why she did not specifically focus on Giotto, whom Hegel, in The Philosophy of Fine Arts, had claimed to had “brought about a reform in the preparing of colors . . . and found room for the burlesque in so much [art] that was pathetic.” If there were one artist of the Early Modern, Western canon, Giotto would certainly be the first who’s presence was made material in all the Cerulean and perfectly circular contours of the time—if we forwent the naming of individual sculptors of the Gothic grotesque.

Still, this does not detract from the lecture or the ideas of “vital projection” which sought to capture the life and poetic language in either one, or all, of the brushstrokes in a painting that an artist had generated through his or her life. In her images, many Richter’s and Polke’s abound, that endless questioning of painting’s existence, purpose, and its ability to do, but it was the last image that struck a singular chord and set a precedent for artists into the 20^th century.

The image with which the lecture left off was a self-portrait by James A.M. Whistler, Arrangement in Grey: Portrait of the Painter (1872), which Graw used to buttress her argument for the continuity of a painter’s successive presence within and throughout Art History. With Whistler involved, the lecture also argued not only to the capital of labor involved in a painting, but also to the historical context that becomes materially latent within a painting. Whistler’s famous case with Ruskin was lastly brought up, whereby the artist had brought the critic to court (not the other way around as popularly believed) for alleged libel—Ruskin writing that he had “never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”²—and possible loss of income. Here, Graw invoked the most famous phrase from that trial: that the painting, Nocturne in Black and Gold (Falling Rocket) (c. 1875-77), was not for sale under the supposition that Whistler’s labor was worth 200 guineas, but that it was “for the knowledge gained through a lifetime.”³

By the use of such a trial and statement, Graw not only left off her lecture with the idea that painting is, and was, the medium most financially successful for artists—though Whistler had fallen on hard times at that date after the disastrous quarrel with Frederick Leyland and the portraits he completed concurrent to the Peacock Room—but that it is, and was, the medium most preferred for generating a success in speaking one’s thoughts and positions in life, even after death

This point is admittedly nothing new, but it did add a new entry into the paragon between painting and sculpture: that painting, unlike its three-dimensional counterpart, i more easily, and freely, able to ‘vitally project’ and ‘speak’ for its considered time in history due to the ease of manipulation inherent to the material, whether tempera, oil, or acrylic. The medium of sculpture, however, so rigid in its elemental compound and geological data, and exampled by Carrera marble, whether by the hue of its striae or the glimmer of tiny crystal used by Noguchi appears the same as it does in Michelangelo’s David--all pre-determining a heavy aesthetic component of a sculpture that is outside of the artist’s hand, regardless of cultural time.

While we may wonder at sculpture and the skill and craft capable of molding stone and other hard material, it is in painting where we ultimately witness the highest exuberance of being and underscored magic. It is the ability of an artist to be, while in total play, the language and emotion of a specific time, free of material history. Essentially, painting has always lived in an atemporal world, for it is the ability to swiftly turn the forever into now. From Gerrit Dou and the Leiden fijnschilders, to CoBrA, to Shiraga and Gutai, the currents of painting, in all its messy oils and egg yolks of yore, transcend their base desires to dilute and destroy when performed and absolved upon by the artist who recognizes the cool empathy of every painted work in history, but immediately becomes apathetic to such when set to canvas.

This is the vitality of painting. It is not the warm blood running through an artist’s fingers or around his or her metacarpals, someday told to stop and turned cold, but the dynamic insouciance and self-disregard of a medium which has created so many masterworks in existence, that, still, it allows itself to be utterly and totally consumed and contorted again and again and again.

***

The question and answer portion of the segment was cut relatively short by Jens Hoffman after a digression into the appropriate use of Marx when discussing social necessity and art, but possibly even more disappointing were the two questions preceding that were determined to situate the use of painting, or image production, within the .jpeg flooded market. Succinctly, the two questions set to the question of how we experience, or ‘find’, painting through mobile devices and the deluge of digital images. This contemporary ‘aesthetic experience’ was marked up by Graw, who noted her research as being focused primarily on the aesthetic value, from history to today, and how painting primarily spoke for the author in absentia.

Throughout all of Graw’s presentation, had no mention of subject and object—artist to object : object to audience—been noted upon, as the research had been singularly focused on how the material of painting acted in accordance to itself and the image it came to be. The painting was continually present, and speaking, even if the artist was not, no matter the platform or form of media one viewed the painting. While the moral question of painting’s role, in conjunction with artistic identity, had been noted, the use of Polke as this haunting presence within the work, or Richter’s attempts to remove presence—either himself or model—by use of photograph, only went so far. What Graw admitted, towards the end, was the unsurety of where the research was headed. In aid to this, the discussion of the .jpeg and image-sharing culture could have abetted the research and questioning segment.

The most interesting aspect of the film, Ex Machina, and like Her before, was what I refer to as the Dr. Manhattan effect (or the Cortana effect if you read the Halo: Combat Evolved book series). The Dr. Manhattan effect is simply the recognition in a being, typically more highly evolved, but not necessarily so, that eventually realizes that it does it need humans to exist on its own. The second understanding between these beings is that humans are not to be destroyed or made slaves to their control—though manipulation is often easy, and the killing of Nathan made necessity for survival—but that the being, in its superior intellect and/or condition, realizes the inevitability of life outside the human ideal and goes on to exist separate from ourselves.  For reproduction, it is not so much asexual as it can produce infinitely from itself—Dr. Manhattan, Her, Cortana, etc . . .—and bring about the image or object it requires simply by willing it forward.

The same thing is happening with images.

The apathy that one experiences, or feels, towards images and their content, today, is not because of such an intense deluge, but because they are simply separated from any human labor in the production of such images. The immediate recognition of where an image comes from—all its idioms, fortunes of language, demonstration of supposed superiority—are evident in the image, because it carries with it all the traits of images before it. This is not an atemporal aspect of an image, nor even the amoral or assimilated identity of an image, but the assertion of the image that it stands on its own separate from our control.

It could be argued that there is still a hand in the process of making an image—the haptic response of clicking the button on a camera or mouse, or the copy and paste of appropriation—but it’s equally known there is little author or creator left. The image wills forth exactly how the next should look, and does not die or end its presence but continues forth into the next image by simply repositioning itself in accordance to all images around it, á la morphic resonance. Or, the magic of telepathy.

¹- Buchloh, Benjamin H.D., An Interview with Gerhard Richter (1986), October Files,
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009). In the interview, Buchloh and Richter discuss the painter’s formative years and understanding of art through the Western canon, primarily focusing on the attenuated circumstances of painting when shifting between Abstract Expressionism to the autonomous process of Pop. Richter’s fascination with Fluxus and Pop allowed his ‘pro-painting’ position to take on such sensibilities, but by means that were ‘less spectacular and less advanced.’ This, in turn, is the economic state of painting in its consideration to other art forms around it: that the artist’s act cannot be negated, but that painting has now nothing to do with the talent of ‘making by hand.’

²-The Works of Ruskin, ed. E.T. Cook and Alexander Weddeburn (London, George Allen, 1907), vol. 29

³- In her lecture, Graw used the word “supposedly” when referring to Whistler’s words in trial, as they have, admittedly, become more an idiom that widely-known fact. Indeed, this phrase is raised in the manuscripts detailing the first day of trial between Ruskin and Whistler, as part of the legal materials in the Joseph and Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collection of Whistleriana, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington D.C.

"---" AT TOMORROW

            For a time now, the discussion to the cartooned figure, or the resurgence of illustration in contemporary art, has been focused most on economic stressors that have presumably influenced, or brought about, its present stature. The difficulties with such overmined possibilities are for another essay, because at issue here, in the newest show at Tomorrow, the illustrated figure and the epistemic quality of drawing, or design—harking back to our understanding of disegno and de-signare—are combined together in a truly excellent show.

            The problem of the hand, and its possible resolution within this show, would be a base criticism – even with the literal projection within Aiello’s work being that of a hand, a rapping sound of fingers clicking against the floor, providing a central momentum to the fragility of form by drawn line – because the hand is not a particularly important component of this show.

The show begins with its title: three dashes “---“ implying at once a line, or three shorter lines, but also, for many who grew up fascinated by ships and maritime communication, Morse code. SOS is translated as "••• – – – •••" three quick raps on the telegraph followed by three holds and back to three quick raps. This “O” being the show title (not so curiously being the object, formally or metaphorically, in three different shows in the LES at present) carries with it serious art historical situations. The primary being that of Vasari’s story of Giotto’s “O”, the first significant instance, or anecdote, where an artist determined his skill not by the better or more beautiful design, but simply by demonstration of his hand in drawing a perfect, red circle.

The circle was a humorous enough remark, but it won Giotto the Duke’s favor, and it set forth the serious understanding that above all, drawing, or disegno, should be pursued by artists in its paragon with colore, considered a superficial obfuscation of bad draftsmanship.

It is here, at Tomorrow that an up-to-date convergence of the two arts has been best worked by Max Brand into his mural, which covers the entire architecture of the gallery.  To memory, in each show since its beginning, artists have worked together the architectonics of the gallery with specific works, in situ as it were, but it is with Brand’s mural, appropriate in boundless Spring joy, that the most straightforward, gratifying gesture has been made.  The forms and entanglement of lines, brought together simply by accumulations and contours of bright color, are as if Kirchner and Bill Traylor had supposed a mural together while attending Städelschule. There is a smartness to it, a sarcastic whim thrown to the idea of “artist-as-child,” but this fruitless discussion of description are nothing if the totality of work does not aid, or aim, in bringing about something.

What is most important about Brand’s drawings, the physical objects included in the show, are what they, with Rappeneau’s drawings, say to the present-tense being of the drawn line.  This present tense formation in drawing, the elements and techniques of the drawn line that bring about a total composition, is described as the forma formans, or the form being presently self-generative rather than having been generated, forma formata. Attention is called to the present, as the drawings here are both founded in historical techniques, but generate line within and without the paper support, creating a present momentum within the line that is neither wholly due to the wall mural or wholly due to the drawings themselves. It is a form in the process of continually forming itself, anew, and actively calling attention to the techniques of drawing that it depends upon for its survival, its living in the present.

However, it is more true that the elegant lines of Rappeneau, deeply attached to the figura serpentinata and elevation of form by convex space so indebted to Mannerist sensibilities, that benefit more so by Brand’s wall drawings than do the artist’s own A4-sized works on paper. Where color is expansive in the mural, it negates, even muddles, the intensely detailed works that Brand has attempted to test the rhetoric of drawing and painting--scrawls, scratches, malfunctioning color that arises appropriately in some homeless representation, all becoming so lost in its present tension with the mural.

            This tension is lost, or eased, in Rappeneau’s works due to the fluidity of form—line extending into paper and exiting smoothly out—that make distinguished his bodies. One is reminded of Ruskin’s praise to the glacial sweeps near Chamonix in the French Alps as the most beautiful abstract lines he had ever seen in nature, noting its slow, emotional drive through the terrain increasingly forming both itself anew as it did the land. Ruskin was writing on architecture, specifically that of Venice, and the lines employed by architects from nature, but as these are intensely mannered bodies—elongated, serpentine forms filling a convex space that leaves “no untidy corners”—an architecture is formed that seems coolly natural. In Parmigianino’s Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, the artist’s hand floats toward the viewer, made larger by the mirror (convex mirrors were more affordable in the Renaissance than flat mirrors due to the mode of manufacturing in the silvering process), as if it is separated from his body. It is an unnatural deference, which many have associated with the ego of the distinguished, highlighted form, but in Rappeneau’s work there is no seeming unnatural, uncouth behavior to form. There is a part-to-part, symbiotic relationship between the bodies and their space, and what connects them in such beautiful harmony, is, like Ruskin’s glacier and Giotto’s “O”, the adherence to natural, untarnished line which continually gives no matter the present.