Painting Today

"The subtitle of Art Since 1900 here holds a key: ‘Modernism, Anti-modernism, Post-modernism’. It was published at the culmination point of post-modernism. Modernism was based on idealism, a utopian vision of life and an almost dogmatic belief in reason and (teleological) progress. Postmodernism, on the other hand, was based upon skepticism and a suspicion of reason, a radical ontological and epistemological doubt. As a result, the definition of art was contested, fading the distinction of high art and low art or popular (mass-)culture, introducing appropriation, eclecticism, breaking the formal conventions of art and questioning the establishment. And so it questioned painting and the so-called stranglehold of aesthetic enjoyment in art. The arts today seem to be in a state of post-postmodernism, for which there is still no agreed monicker. There is already a different tendency from what Art Since 1900 leaves off with. The postmodern moment in art criticism seemed driven to liberate art from being aesthetic. In a way, art theory had argued that aesthetic form had traditionally been a component of bourgeois identity, but to (post-)modernists it was deeply suspicious, perhaps even the ultimate bourgeois delusion. Which may have led to a denigration of the aesthetic in relevant art. However, I disagree that aesthetics were abolished by artists throughout postmodern movements such as conceptual art. If a conceptual work of art has been made – in essence meaning that the concept or the idea is the most important element, and not the aesthetic end result – it does not perforce mean the artwork cannot be aesthetically pleasing. Take as an example perhaps the most iconic conceptual artwork, One and Three Chairs by Joseph Kosuth . It has a refinement and simplicity that I think is very aesthetically pleasing – the arrangement of the chair and the panel. Or take for instance Jan Vercruysse , a Belgian conceptual artist. He was an aesthetic pur sang , and a bona fide conceptual artist. There are aesthetic considerations to making a work of art even when that work never sets out to have the ambition of being pleasing to the eye or in good taste. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter In this post-postmodern era, we maybe find comfort in this sort of beauty. In our forthcoming book, titled Apologia , there is the juxtaposition of a work by Marcel Broodthaers , the Belgium conceptual artist, featuring eggs on a table – not something which many people would describe as aesthetically redeeming in any form or way – next to a painting by his compatriot Michaël Borremans , of a person holding an egg in his hands. On a conceptual level, both artworks do in fact the same things. They present an interplay on the meaning of the egg. You can see at the same time that there is no narrative. Both works are in fact absurd or surreal, but they have the same semiotic approach towards the egg and its role in art history. As a medium for painting and pigment, for example, as in the case of egg tempera paint, a very traditional technique. Or, simultaneously, for the genesis of things when you consider the symbolic meaning of the egg. So in fact this liberation of art from aesthetic considerations, and the shift in the semiotics for art, remains central even in the art being produced today. Aesthetically pleasing work can perform an overtly conceptual function. For me, maybe with the case of Michaël Borremans, the work is even too beautiful to fully grasp at first the more intellectual interplay of symbolic elements or the semiotics in the artwork, but these are still very much present, they are in fact the driving force throughout his oeuvre. Figurative painting is often characterised as a reactionary movement. In fact, as this example has illustrated, it is more like a synthesis that builds upon this legacy of conceptual art. It takes a different form today. Beauty and aesthetics are an important element because the radical and uncompromising statement of modernism, and even postmodernism, left us a bit alienated. Now we find comfort or solace, more a connection with our feeling and our guts in the medium and in the beauty of the medium. Given the primacy of figuration in painting in the West over many centuries, these are elements that feel familiar. Painting makes these sentiments accessible again. I feel that in our post-postmodern era we are living a synthesis in the arts. Everything which happened since the 1900s up to today – we had modernism, anti-modernism and postmodernism – it feels like we are in a new era. Although there is no consensus yet in academic circles concerning what we call it, until something better and more succinct arrives, we can talk about our post-postmodern era. The broad brushstroke stereotype is that figurative painting is something traditional, even old-fashioned or obsolete. Yet nonetheless critics and collectors and fellow artists admire someone like Borremans simply for his brushstrokes. That can actually go too far, and obscure some of the ideas inherent in his work, which is also wrong in a certain way. As so often, art is trying to strike a delicate balance. Figurative painting today is innovative in a way, for all of its traditional media. It’s new. Like any emerging phenomenon, it’s normal that there are certain pitfalls and misconceptions around figurative painting today. It functions as a justification – hence the title of the first publication, Apologia, for Contemporary Art Issue and forthcoming books. This is where reading not only what art historians and critics have written is important. It is arguably even more important to understand the practitioners themselves. What in particular are artists themselves seeking to express? What was the incentive for their work? How does art history and other artists’ work influence theirs?"