5 September - 4 October 1998
Painting, fifty or so years ago, was critically ingested through a panacea language that included terms like 'metaphysical', 'heroic', 'epic' and 'theological'. Alot of it was American, but that's the way they'd inherited it. To talk about painting now, utilising these the concepts, would seem decidedly incongruous. Like putting new wine in old bottles. Somewhere along the way, it dawned that the aesthetics of the Beautiful and the Sublime were unsuitable grounds on which to structure a creed to transcendentalism. As a result, painting didn't die, it just joined the real world. Colour lost its Symbolism, Goethe's theory of colour gave way to Wittgenstein's remarks on colour and the verb/noun of painting could no longer predicate the 'life of the mind'.
Ostensibly, poetry ceased to exist, the synthetic and synaesthetic predilections of the art of painting acceded to a rational psychology, and then, an analytic materialism. This is why painters don't commit suicide any more. However, despite the many insurrections certain fingerprints and other forensics are still to be found. Though, purporting to locate the 'Matissean heart' or the 'ultimate naturalness' is the wrong way to go about it, as much as it is nonsensical to ask the question: 'who is speaking here with this mouth?', or to proclaim: 'this mountain didn't exist a minute ago, but one exactly the same did'.
