On Jan 16th, I watched the latest CBS “Sunday Morning Show”. (It along with “60 Minutes” and “West Wing” are my only must watch shows during the week.) One of the feature stories of the “Sunday Morning Show” was the most recent “Miami Basil”. I discussed the event in an earlier post and commended the group of Pacific Northwest Artists that rented-out a motel to host their own exhibit in the city. But watching the show on Sunday I was struck by a very unsettling image – the lack of painting as a presence in the show. Now I had very little imagery to go on in my previous post about the Seattle-based artist group so I didn’t know if they were pushing mostly conceptual art as well or what and really didn’t care, at the time. But I now wonder what was the make-up of this “show of shows” for the USA. Is painting truly being delegated to the back-bin of contemporary art? That’s the impression given by the media presenting the event on my favorite Sunday morning show.
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"What will it take for painting with imagery, possibly even symbolism – to return to the forefront?"
Do you mean the forefront of painting in particular, or of art in general?
A great deal of what is written about and reported on regarding the art world tends to focus on the avant-garde, whatever that happens to be at any given moment.
For most of the last half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries painting played a leading role in most of the new movements and received a lot of attention.
As a visual artist myself, I believe there will always be painters producing skillful, imaginative and powerful work. But, as long as the emphasis is on the avant-garde in the strictest sense, that is to say, confined only to that which breaks entirely new ground, then I don't see painting returning to the forefront of contemporary art.
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