On Painting

Gerhard Richter, "Silsersee"

People have been asking me why I only cited realist paintings as examples of good paintings in my “The Myth of The Death of Painting” post a few days ago.  People have asked me if abstract and non-representational painting can be good painting too.  I love abstract painting, when it’s done well.  One of my favorite painters is Gerhard Richter, and in fact I like his abstract paintings better than his realist paintings.

The eccentricity with non-representational painting is that essentially there are no rules to it.  Abstract art doesn’t have the physical world to be compared to in order to judge the quality of the painting by.  There is no “model” by which abstract art can be compared or judged.  But, abstract art is subject to the same aesthetic laws of pictorial representation on a two-dimentional plane.  Design, color and the illusion of space are just as important in abstract art as they are in realism.  Unfortunately, there are many notorious examples from the age of modern art where a painter attempted to create non-representational paintings, but in fact created horrible abstract paintings that art critics told the world were good paintings.  Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and many others from the age of modern art created horribly boring paintings.

But still there were some modern painters who created exceptional abstract works.  Kandinsky did wonderful compositions representing human achievement in music.  Gorky created achingly beautiful abstract imagery about emotional experiences in urban modern life.  Op artists Vassarely and Bridget Riley created sublime visual experiences on canvass.  More recently, in the tradition of Op artists, Susie Rosmarin creates wonderful visual experiences.  Color Field painters like Jules Olitski and Vija Celmins created boundless space in their paintings.  I like them all.  There are other wonderful abstract paintings, too numerous to mention here.

Susie Rosmarin, (#339) "V2"

A couple of things about non-representational paintings.  The material being used: paint; is basically colored dirt mixed with a fluid material.  A successful painting must use the material of paint in a manner that causes the viewer to look past the nature of the material.  If the painting is just paint on canvas without compelling imagery, then that’s simply house painting, not art.  The trick is to make the material of paint disappear into the background so that the image being represented, either abstract or realistic, engages the viewers attention.   Many painters’ works do not cross that hurdle, in my estimation.  Also, this is not a rule but rather a preference for me: a painting has to be complex enough to hold my attention.  That requires appealing design, a range of color and intensity of color, and layers of space in the painting.

Kristine Moran, "Surfacing"

There is a new painter who is creating abstract work, Kristine Moran, who has some seeds of exciting imagery she’s creating in her painting, mixing pure abstraction with formalism.  I also like Dana Shutz’s paintings, in general.  Some are better than others.  I particularly prefer her works that contrast areas of colorful cartoon imagery with other areas in the painting that more closely resemble the real world.  I think if she can exploit that contrast more purposefully and skillfully, she can create some staggering works.  Of course her colors are vibrant and exciting. 

I view abstract works in this way:  it took roughly a few hundred years for painters to learn enough techniques and for the materials and tools to develop enough so that paintings represented reality to such a degree that it closely mirrored the appearance of the real world.  Likewise, it will take a few hundred years for painters to assess what abstract paintings should look like.  We’re about sixty or seventy years into abstract painting, so there is a way to go.  There’s also limitless human imagination and inventiveness, which is also the eternal hope for painting.

Wes Freese, "Hegemony"