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Dedicated to The Status of Painting (in 2023)

(14.2.2023) What is the status of painting in 2023, fifty years after Picasso’s death? What is the standing of painting in 2023? The academic ›painting discourse‹ suggests that, perhaps among other things, we do see ›painting beside itself‹ (David Joselit), which means, from what I can tell, that painting today, being part of productional and distributional networks, looks over its own shoulder, becoming aware that it lives under economical and media conditions of today, and that painting today shows and stages, with pride or humility, this awareness of being just one current within a mighty stream of pictures, pictures that circulate, digest (or ignore) other pictures, a mighty stream that might leave us somehow clueless as to the status of painting in 2023, or perhaps, as far as we might be painters, inclined to supplement the medium of painting with other ways of expression, to show that, at least, it has this awareness of what painting is or could be today. I am not sure how much weight to give the academic ›painting discourse‹, but I feel inclined to embark on another walk to do another visual essay, this time including some notes as to the status of painting in 2023, fifty years after Picasso’s death (all pictures here: DS).

I do believe that painting, like drawing, like poetry etc. is alive as it has ever been, in terms of being still one way of producing works that could affect a person as a whole, by speaking to the existence of a person as a whole, and that also a way of understanding or misunderstanding painting – as mere decoration – is still alive as well as it has ever been. So far so good, but the conditions under which painting does exist are indeed in rapid change, and by conditions one might understand the expectations we have concerning a painting and what it should do or could be, as well as the institutional conditions which allow or do not allow that the world does know of what is happening in painting on a local or international scale. I am regretting that art market journalism has outshadowed actual art journalism which does take art seriously in the aforementioned sense. It does still exist, but in rather isolated ways. Some individuals still have the chance to do art journalism and to reach big audiences, but the scope has diminished in recent years.

I do think that the status of painting is, on some level, similar to the status of the printed book. By which I mean that pictures that do exist virtually, or in terms of appearences on computer screens, have the potential today, due to technical means, to exist suddenly in poster size, in banner size or even bigger. Like texts, pictures can easily be ›unfolded‹, in surprisingly new ways, but also can have a more modest (?) existence as being mostly mere data. It is of course unfamiliar for a painting lover to watch the transformations of pastose color surfaces into flat pictures and into other surfaces again, but we look into a future of physical objects being built and rebuilt atom by atom. And a three dimensional object will be able to transform itself into a flat object and, due to 3D-printers, into a three-dimensional object again, with flat or mountain-like surfaces.

Originals will remain originals, but coexist with copies that, on a nano-level will show exactly as the original, and I see the hype of Non-Fungible-Tokes rather as a symptom of change: a NFT which is nothing but a reproduction with a technically provided provenance certificate is not an original in the traditional sense (as something done or at least touched by the hand of a creator). Such relic (which a NFT is not!) will remain valuable, but less and less so, as originals and copies will become more and more undistinguishable. A work by Banksy does exist as a physical object (or configurations of objects), but in my view, it already does live primarily on the multiple screens that make the public sphere(s) today, as news, as news concerning an artistic intervention, as news from the art world, but also as news from the world outside the actual ›art world‹, in which such intervention takes place. And this seems to be one trend of what a painting might be today: a way of existing on multiple screens, no matter if, at its origins, a work had be done as a painting, a drawing, a print, or as data within ›Macpaint‹. And the question would be, if, in the aforementioned sense, the work would be – existing on multiple screens and having multiple lives at multiple places at once – would be speaking to a person as a whole, affecting this person’s existence on an existential level (or, if you prefer, if it would at least make good decoration, which would be also a quality, but another quality). And one might raise the question here, if a work by Banksy has the awareness of being ›painting beside itself‹ (I do belive so), and if so, if it does show this awareness as well, or if it rather disguises it (it seems to me that the latter is the case).

On my walk I have realized that, on a local scale, painting is also alive in terms of service: artists are offering to people to have portraits of their favourite pets produced (I have seen it). I have realized that it is not that easy, or actually rather contingent, to define what a painting is (what visual configuration passes as a painting, and which does not; compare the picture above). And that definitions of what a painting is – definitions that are circulating in the public sphere – might be important to an individual or not. I am free not to care about blockbusters. But if a blockbuster show does include paintings that do speak to me in the aforementioned sense, there would be nothing to say against blockbusters, except perhaps: in 2023 perhaps also the experience of seeing such work of art reproduced could suffice to affect a person on an existential level, which in the end would be a criteria, my criteria, to decide over the status of painting in 2023, fifty years after Picasso’s death.

MICROSTORY OF ART
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