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The Triumph of Painting

The Triumph of Painting/Colour Power,

Dr. Janet McKenzie, Studio International

'The Triumph of Painting' is, in certain respects, the triumph of Charles Saatchi. For 20 years, he has been an arbiter of taste in contemporary art, capable of making or breaking artists' careers. 'The Triumph of Painting' has attracted great media attention for the apparent U-turn Saatchi has made, from supporting the conceptual work of Damien Hirst and other young Brit artists whose work was apparently made to shock and to push the boundaries of art to the limit. In 'The Triumph of Painting' the work of one artist, Martin Kippenberger, is championed, perhaps at the expense of other artists who have been equally responsible for extinguishing the grand gesture in art. But this time, traditional methods of painting are celebrated, not banished. The message of this 20th anniversary exhibition is that 'painting continues to be the most relevant and vital way that artists choose to communicate'. The three-part survey of painting will look at contemporary painting from a generational perspective, including 6 artists in Part 1, 13 in Part 2 (June - September 2005) and 36 artists in Part 3 (September - December 2005). Part 1 opened on 26 January 2005.

This is not in any way a definitive survey, or indeed the best available, but it is nevertheless an important exhibition and one that shows Saatchi's remarkable conviction and confidence. Numerous important painters are conspicuous by their absence and many young artists are elevated to new heights.

Part 1 of 'The Triumph of Painting' includes work by Martin Kippenberger, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Luc Tuymans, Jörg Immendorf and Hermann Nitsch. The work of Immendorf in this context is perhaps the most impressive and significant. Commentators have enjoyed the opportunity to herald the rebirth of painting, as pronounced by the giant of contemporary art patronage. Saatchi himself is more qualified when he describes the significance of painting in the past 20 years as inevitably informed by media, conceptual art and photography:

'Contemporary painting responds to the work of video makers and photographers. But it is also true that contemporary painting is influenced by music, writing, MTV, Picasso, Hollywood, newspapers, Old Masters... I don't have a particularly lofty agenda with 'The Triumph of Painting'. People need to see some of the remarkable painting produced, and overlooked, in an age dominated by the attention given to video, installation and photographic art.'

Critics of Charles Saatchi have enjoyed making the assumption that a man who has made his exceptional wealth in the field of advertising must have had his aesthetic judgement formed by television advertising, and that this judgement must be flawed. Ironically for these critics, Sydney artist Ken Done (also shunned by the Australian art world for being a former adman and too successful in financial terms as an artist), was recently interviewed by BBC Radio Four in London. He was asked whether Damien Hirst's shark in formaldehyde - 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' (1991), Saatchi's most famous work until it was sold to an American museum for £7million - was good art and whether or not it scared him. Done, who rejects conceptual art and is passionate about the painted image (which is more relevant, he believes, in a world dominated by media and photography), replied that as an Australian, he is only scared of live sharks. Issues of integrity as opposed to commercial forces, cultural identity and conflict, the new world and ancient cultures, decadent society and individual commitment all play a part in the assessment of the validity of Saatchi's exhibition. In fact, a pluralist culture relegates such pursuits as largely untenable. Besides the obvious differences, the key issue that separates the two exhibitions is the quality of the dialogue.

Charles Saatchi has been collecting art for over 30 years and showing it for the last 20 years in his own gallery in London. His early exhibitions reveal a wide range of interests in the visual arts: Donald Judd, Brice Marden, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Carl André, Sol LeWitt, Frank Stella, Dan Flavin, Anselm Kiefer, Richard Serra, Philip Guston and Sigmar Polke. The impressive list continues, making Saatchi not only a discerning collector but an individual responsible for elevating the profile of contemporary art and encouraging other collectors to choose 'contemporary art rather than racehorses, vintage cars, jewellery or yachts.'

If we believe that Charles Saatchi is announcing that painting is alive after a critical hiatus, we might be irritated by the apparently dominant role of money over integrity. But Saatchi is not making such a claim. In fact, he is critical of curators and commentators in the art world in determining trends in art. In a recent interview he stated:

'The familiar grind of seventies conceptualist retreads, the dry as dust photo and text panels, the production line of banal and impenetrable installations, the hushed and darkened rooms with their interchangeable flickering videos are the hallmarks of a decade of numbing right-on curatordom. The fact that in the last ten years only five of the 40 Turner Prize nominees have been painters tells you more about the state of painting today.'

In her essay 'Moorditj Marbarn (Strong Magic)', Aboriginal artist Julie Dowling quotes Jean-Paul Sartre, who believed that 'the painter paints the world only so that free men may feel their freedom as they face it'. Dowling's belief that painting is her means of cultural and personal survival provides an important perspective to the notion that painting is alive in the broadest sense:

'[O]n a metaphysical level, the use of pigments and materials such as ochres is a sacred act coming from sacred lands. Such pigments have power because they project these same values, while we translate the many layers of meaning we possess in our minds and hearts as indigenous peoples. Such colours create relationships between people and the land by travelling great distances throughout the world on bark boards, carved objects and on canvas.'

These ideals are a far cry from the iconoclastic and, at times, pornographic images by Kippenberger, the artist singled out in the first of the catalogue essays. Gingeras observes, 'The recent emergence of Kippenbergiana in the work of many younger artists would suggest that his formal legacy has recently been codified into some sort of avant-garde sign value - where the look of awkwardness, unfinished-finish and stylistic irregularity are understood as markers of an antagonistic position and of politico-aesthetic gravitas.'

The Leonardo scholar, Martin Kemp, describes the very stuff of painting in relation to the work of Arthur Boyd:

'Its extraordinary material properties, thin and thick, translucent and opaque, the ravishing intensity of saturated pigments, and its paradoxical ability to insinuate the painter's impulses into the spectator's imagination... painting can conjure up a world of living beings, and tell moving stories, without literal imitation of what things look like.'

'The Triumph of Painting' falls short in making connections and in pursuing the significance of the wide range of work presented. It is to be hoped that over the course of this year, as the three parts of 'The Triumph of Painting' are unveiled, commentators can give a meaningful appraisal of the cultural significance of the work of the diverse number of artists currently involved in the field of painting. Perhaps as spring turns to summer, the immediate impression of a culturally sardonic mood will lift.

http://www.studio-international.co.uk/painting/triumph.htm

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