Did Painting Die?

I saw a flat-screen monitor today and nearly died of envy...

I can listen to music (or just about anything) when I'm working in the studio as long as I'm not painting. Gessoing, cleaning up, whatever. But once I start serious work, everything else goes away. One thing I have discovered which seems obvious once discovered but which took me a long time to figure out (!) was that the quality of the work is greatly affected by what I'm taking in when I'm not working. If I'm reading badly written stuff, I don't work as well. Listening to uninteresting music? I'll wind up doing a lot of erasing, tossing out. Work habits are weird.

I deal with this every day at work, since my work is sort of plug along and also sometimes creative. All sorts of stimuli feed into or out of the - for lack of a word I like better - zone of working things out....or flying. In my case, at work, flying is nice, but solutions have to work in real life. Landscape design is really exciting, agggggg, some percentage of the time.

But the same things appertain to painting. All going on in your mind, to be quieted or tuned in to, as you prepare to settle in...

art
I am wondering what we mean by the question "Did painting die?" We all know that people will continue to paint, and art supply stores will continue to sell canvases, paints, brushes, and even easels. Perhaps we are talking about the future of the gallery industry or the role of art historians in the post-modern era.

Die, well, die relative to the interest of many people now in their teens, twenties, thirties, entering years of expressing themselves through art forms. Uh, as I understand the question.

art
Osso, you understood my question, and I think you're right regarding the generational shift. But I can't help but to feel that the pendulum will swing back someday. You are not suggesting, of course, that the new generations will completely ignore painting as a form of aesthetic expression but that a proportion of the artistic population will.

Yes, pendulums do certainly swing. In fact, I would like to help some pendula along...




edited to improve spelling

seconded

art
Must we sit back as bystandeRs waiting and hoping for the pendulum to swing back? Shouldn't we make it swing? Or at least encourage others to do so.

Recently I sold a painting, my first. The person who bought it was a young woman either highschool or early college age. While it was a great feeling to know that someone was will to pay the price for my stuff the better vision was the look on the buyer's face.

Clearly she was purchasing her first piece of original painting. She was thrilled with her purchase and I was thrilled as well.

Art does not die in my opinion but the souls of various artisits just change direction. Sometimes the new direction takes some time to become known and accepted by the public at large.

P.S. John I have a buyer for one of your paintings PM me if you are interested in selling anything.

I don't feel chagrined at "the death of painting," in part because I don't think it's really happening. It's cyclical. There's a lot of very interesting (and some truly awful, and in between some pretendo-artistes!) painters+ out there. Everytime I see the title of this discussion, I think of Frank Stella -- as one of the first to expand beyond the flat surface in a contemporary way... I looked through the gallery list of Austin, TX this morning (not a great town for the visual arts, but with one or two really good galleries) and see all kinds of youthful experimenting going on, including with ink-jets (new to me!). UT has an art school, so the art supply stores are kept happy.

ART
Do my eyes deceive me, has JD finally returned? VERY pleased to see you, Joanne. Congratulations on the sale. Regarding your question about a possible buyer for me, I'll answer you by "pm."
By the way, JD, the question is not whether or not "art" has died but whether painting has. Do you think that painting will cease to exist in favor of other forms of artistic expression?

No not at all - why would. Digital is just like photograpy to me and painting did not die when the ability to produce perfect picturse sort of came about.

In fact remember the "photo realism" or super realism of the 70s. The trade mark of those paintings was to creat a spot in the painting a little out of focus just like the camera would do.

Digital art is just to perfect for my taste but I do like it and the shapes produced by it.

Painting will never cease not will sculputre or architecture or music.

The more ways for an artist to express themself the better. I love it all even it I do not like it.

I love it all even if I do not like it...great comment, Joanne.

Thank you Osso tis true you know. You don't have to like it but ya gotta love artists and their creations.

art
Yes, Joanne, thanks for the comment. It actually has some "healing value" for me in my bitterness regarding the "eclipse" that has descended on art in the last twenty years (referring to John Spaulding's The Eclipse of Art). At least those whose work I find meaningless are finding inspiration and creative expression. That's good to know. Thanks.

I think abstraction will forevermore be part of the swing now over the fulcrum. Yes, I can see that it could be the fulcrum itself. Anyway, if it seems to wane it won't be gone long.

Your striving for position for abstraction reminds me of my growing interest in structure in landscape design, another whole subject.

Now that's fascinating. I don't see anything like an eclipse, haven't read Spaulding. I see tremendously interesting things happening, with about the same proportion of them being shallow and fly-by-night as there ever was.

In the context of this discussion, I'd be most interested to hear comments on Richter.

With no basis at all, just off the top of my head reading about him in the NYT, I am prone to like his work, but I speak from ignerench. Maybe I like his words.

Architecture may be picking up some slack, I liked the show that Walter put on Relay's topic on Berlin.... not that it is all liveable, but I see slivers of beauty. Another whole subject. I think we need an architecture subsection here eventually, or if not subsection, to develop some topics on it within art.

art
Check out the encouraging first paragraph of the following:
www.artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Articles0903a/DrunkenMastersA.html.

Richter is one of the few well known contemporary (living) artists that I like. He is inventive, and merges gracefully modern and traditional painting concepts.