Picturing People: The New State of the Art

"Agreed. As a catalogue of paintings, what a great show this selection would make! Her subtitle, ‘A New State of the Art’, is telling. I feel she really embraces this new tendency, and the rehabilitation of the aesthetic, the appetite for paint we see across many artists working in different parts of the world, and the desire to paint the figure. This is another reasoned selection of painters who really deserve a place amongst other artists who are keeping this art historical dialogue with painters of the past alive. This is also the only book from our list of five fully committing to take on only ‘figurative’ painting. The chapter headings — “Image Hunters” for example, or “The Picture in History” – at first come across as eccentric. On the other hand, in this post-postmodern moment, with a lack of agreed-upon categories, this seems a viable approach towards this new state-of-the-art. These categories point to different possible subjects, which are in fact relevant for analysing and understanding art being produced today. In the end, it’s not necessary to do so. Any label will be categorised under a container concept. Let me explain. For example, the container concept of ‘Baroque’. An altarpiece by Rubens and a still life by Frans Snyders could not be more different, from the religious context of the Counter-Reformation to the symbolic human pleasures of the still life, and yet they are both regarded as Baroque. The aforementioned book Painting Today deploys no fewer than 15 categories! When you go through them individually, you realise that the same artists are repeated throughout several categories. It’s no surprise, because most painters today are not exclusively working in landscape or still life painting. For instance, Luc Tuymans famously painted what superficially appears to be a still life painting after 9/11 . However, this painting is far from being a conventional still life. In fact, it’s very insidious in a way. The pure horror made Tuymans search for the idyll. What’s more idyllic than a still life? Just painting fruits, as the example of painting an orange in our introduction on figurative painting. However, the still life is monumental and there is a certain trauma residing in it. In fact, this painting is not at all a still life painting, but history painting, as it is a reaction to a historical event. These are categories that have outlived their usefulness, and I think this is a good thing. Terminology must not distract us from the impact or the meaning of the work itself. We can use them as a framework for discussion, but painting today goes beyond. Painting is in fact a privileged medium, even today. Painting can be genuine in a manner most other mediums cannot. Painting carries the touch of a human being, something that operates at a metaphysical level, and which cannot be reproduced. One of painters’ greatest weapons is the alchemy of painting . When I look at figurative painting today, I notice an anthology of concepts such as melancholia , the German terms Sehnsucht and Weltschmerz or the Portuguese saudade . Painting seems particularly well placed for expressing notions such as these and, furthermore, for concepts such as existentialism, the human condition, absurdism, or even the state of (post-)postmodernism itself. All of these I would argue are concepts or preoccupations that are very lively today. Which is what makes figurative painting so vigorous as a discourse. I like to see myself as a painter foremost rather than an art historian. The dialogue with the painters of the past continues. All we can do is follow our desires and urges and we will contribute to this dialogue. Everything has already been said, and it hasn’t been enough. So let’s continue talking."