Painting was proclaimed dead in the 1980s. Discuss referencing Greenberg, the Conceptual Art movement and the revival of painting in the 1980s.
Contemporary Art Essay
Code: 81.232
Word count: 1,836
Topic: 4
Painting was proclaimed dead in the 1980s.
Discuss referencing Greenberg, the Conceptual Art movement and the revival of painting in the 1980s.
I have written this work myself and have made every attempt to acknowledge the ideas of others.
Painting has been declared dead numerous times since the 1960s but it refuses to die, even though the relevance and legitimacy of the medium is repeatedly questioned. Because of this, painting has had to constantly redefine itself, re-negotiating it’s terms of existence, as new understandings of what art is materialise from our collective consciousness.
When the death of painting was discussed in the 1980s, there was a belief that all combinations had been tried. Douglas Crimp, whose ruminations on the end of painting expressed the feeling of the time, cites the ‘black paintings’ of Ad Reinhardt (“the last paintings anyone can make”), the monotone and white paintings of Robert Ryman and the mechanical, striped paintings of Daniel Buren as evidence that painting had reached the end of the road. Crimp states “It is but a matter of time before painting will be seen for the pure idiocy that it is” (Verwoert, n.d.).
Robert Ryman became well known in spite of his unconventional approach to painting. Although his critics tried to fit his work into a variety of categories, including minimalism, anti-form, process or conceptualism, they eventually admitted that none could be accurately applied to his art. He disagrees that his work is abstract, saying “I don’t abstract from anything. My work is involved with real visual aspects of what you really are looking at, whether it’s wood, or you see the paint, and the metal, and how it’s put together and how it works with the wall and how it works with the light” (Adams, 2012).
Robert Ryman, Versions I, 1992, (detail) Robert Ryman, Orange Painting,
Code: 81.232
Word count: 1,836
Topic: 4
Painting was proclaimed dead in the 1980s.
Discuss referencing Greenberg, the Conceptual Art movement and the revival of painting in the 1980s.
I have written this work myself and have made every attempt to acknowledge the ideas of others.
Painting has been declared dead numerous times since the 1960s but it refuses to die, even though the relevance and legitimacy of the medium is repeatedly questioned. Because of this, painting has had to constantly redefine itself, re-negotiating it’s terms of existence, as new understandings of what art is materialise from our collective consciousness.
When the death of painting was discussed in the 1980s, there was a belief that all combinations had been tried. Douglas Crimp, whose ruminations on the end of painting expressed the feeling of the time, cites the ‘black paintings’ of Ad Reinhardt (“the last paintings anyone can make”), the monotone and white paintings of Robert Ryman and the mechanical, striped paintings of Daniel Buren as evidence that painting had reached the end of the road. Crimp states “It is but a matter of time before painting will be seen for the pure idiocy that it is” (Verwoert, n.d.).
Robert Ryman became well known in spite of his unconventional approach to painting. Although his critics tried to fit his work into a variety of categories, including minimalism, anti-form, process or conceptualism, they eventually admitted that none could be accurately applied to his art. He disagrees that his work is abstract, saying “I don’t abstract from anything. My work is involved with real visual aspects of what you really are looking at, whether it’s wood, or you see the paint, and the metal, and how it’s put together and how it works with the wall and how it works with the light” (Adams, 2012).
Robert Ryman, Versions I, 1992, (detail) Robert Ryman, Orange Painting,