Isabelle Graw: The Economy of Painting: Notes on the
Vitality of a Success Medium
The Jewish Museum
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 20th century.
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 20th 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.
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.
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.
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.
