Painting (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art)

"So apt! I love that one-liner. In a way, this book sets out to say what has already been said! So the opening and closing of the book are like an inside joke by Myers. What has been said about ourselves but also about what has been said about the arts. In order to say something new, one needs to know what has already been said. This is also chronologically set out, going through the most important essays, interviews and other writings about art by artists and the most respected art critics in their day. Once again you can really feel yourself transported to their time as you read this, decade by decade. So we start with the ‘end of painting’ text by Douglas Crimp, which is a famous critique from the early twentieth century that you can feel is also very present throughout our prior selections, Painting Today and Art Since 1900 . In fact, it seems to be a question we cannot stop asking ourselves, whether painting is dead or not. It also features here, and in the introduction of Vitamin P2 , Picturing People and also in my introduction to Contemporary Art Issue . This entire notion of cycles of rebirth of painting is a recurring notion, because in fact it’s not really a cycle so much as an historical continuum of reinvention. A characteristic of art of every period since we have been speaking about art in historical terms, right up to other postmodern art movements is that they are all reinventions of art itself. Painting has been undergoing the same process, but interestingly from my perspective, it has a much longer tradition than more novel forms of expression. However its longevity does not mean that it hasn’t been reinventing itself. On the contrary, it has been compelled to do so with even greater regularity, right into our present moment! This book is full of examples of painters and artists literally in dialogue with one another. There are some great conversations, Vija Clemins with Chuck Close , Svetlana Alpers with Matthew Collings and even Gerhard Richter in conversation with the art historian Buchloh, one of the co-authors of Art Since 1900 , to name a few incredibly rich dialogues. Dumas in particular is someone who really proclaims this empowerment of the artist in the debates on contemporary art. She writes her own catalogue texts for exhibitions, something I admire and hope to do as well over the years. Many artists can be a bit distant when it comes to talking about their own work and art in general, as if it’s not something they should talk about, or a task to be left to others. It’s exactly something artists should talk about and Contemporary Art Issue wishes to do the same, to re-empower the artist in these debates about the art of our time. Therefore books like Documents on Contemporary Art are extremely valuable; I think vital. These texts are canonical, but might otherwise have been lost as magazine clippings from the likes of Artforum or show catalogues. Here again, we see the importance of their reproduction in book form, documenting art and accumulating into a collective art history."