I took my children to see the new popcorn flick “Superman Returns”, yesterday. I wasn’t expecting much, so I was happily surprised to have enjoyed it as much as I did. The theme music was the same as the first 1978 Christopher Reeve version; even the design of the opening credits remained unchanged. Furthermore, the resemblance of the new Superman actor, Brandon Routh, to Christopher Reeve was uncanny. The previous campy nature of the “bad guy” characters was gone and the new twists in the story gave the characters a much more human quality.
Sometimes it’s good not to change the basics. Superman still had the ridiculous tights, the bad haircut and unbelievable alter-ego concealed only by a pair of horn-rim glasses; but it wouldn’t have been the Superman I remembered without those things.
Every few years painting is declared dead. Take a look at any recent Whitney Biennial and you might start to believe it. Just like trying to envision a new Superman without the theme music I grew-up on, I cannot imagine an art world without painting. My own work may divert from the use of traditional western materials, but the act of creation is in itself still the process of painting.
Does labeling oneself a painter with designs towards tradition, designate the need for a purely realistic style? The majority of the great abstractionist, expressionists and modernists lived and died before I was ever born. Can the term “traditional painting” only refer to realism, any longer? – DN
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