7. provisional painting (2012)
IRISH ARTIST DAMIEN FLOOD first drew my attention to Raphael Rubinstein's article 'Provisional Painting’ for the periodical Art in America first published: (04.05.2009). My first reaction to the article was a double-barreled, locked and loaded—'what?' and 'So what! But as time drew on what the American critic was saying seemed to offer more than was first dismissed as — here we go again, another attempt to catagorise the 'anything goes of contemporary painting. What Rubinstein observed about painting in the article was nothing new. The discussion around what he referred to as "provisional painting" was built on the notion of a particular way of applying paint, which questioned the very idea of a 'finished' artwork.
What Rubinstein's article did manage to reveal is that such sweeping statements that try to categorise what is a very complex genus of the artworld, are good for the jaded discourse that has followed the medium since the early '80s: but "sweeping statement" it still remains.
Rubinstein's 'sweeping' began with the five painters he selected to prove his thesis: Raoul De Keyser, Albert Oehlen, Christopher Wool, Mary Heilmann, Michael Krebber; with Richard Tuttle, Martin Kippenberger, and Joan Miró mentioned in passing. Alluding to the Catalan artist Miró, Rubinstein gives us a clear definition of what he means by provisional painting: "I think the source of Miró's daring, and the reason why his work is so close to what I'm calling 'provisional painting, resides in his rejection of the idea of a finished, durable work." [2] There is something very unsatisfying about the placement of the punk-conceptualist painters, Wool, Krebber, Oehlen, with the light, painterly lyricism of Mary Heilmann and Raoul De Keyser. It is true that they are all what I would describe as, 'cognitive misers', but their relationships with painting seems, at face-value at least, very divergent, in both approach and conceptual outcome. Heilmann and De Keyser insouciant brushstrokes cover up a deeply ingrained formalist manifesto of their generation-"It's all about the paint." Whereas as Wool, Krebber, Oehlen are more brutalist in their approach, placing any obstacle they can find in front of the 'canvas' to interrupt and erase any potential of 'painter's painter' idolatry.
Rubinstein's provisional painting thesis seems to be another 'vain' attempt to label something that is inherent in most painting practices that have reached a certain maturity. Although a sweeping generalisation all of my own, painters do gradually become more casual in painterly approach when they hit their thirties? As teenagers we fill the page from edge-to-edge the Chapman brothers relive this adolescent trait over and over again in their model installations - but through experience this condition of 'packing' the canvas seems less important to most of us who make and view paintings. The reason for such casual and unfinished painting methodology is to be found in what Rubinstein calls a growing foundational scepticism," but as Polish painter Wilhelm Sasnal admits, its also “about not boring oneself.”
Rubinstein doesn't consider 'taste' as part of his thesis, as in the personal taste of the artist making the work, and his/ her being conditioned to be 'tasteful', i.e. how the rest of the world responds to the painter's language is a defining factor in how a painter evolves their personal taste? Perhaps, a better question is: is taste learnt? Ther is also the fact that as artists mature 'language' and 'experience' condition how they break down their evolving/ devolving painting language, particularly painters that skirt the border between subject, object, and figuration in their work. If something reminds the painter of an explicit object, or references another painter's language, do they not feel the need to cover this up, to find something that 'personalises' it for them, that sets them apart, so not to represent the 'personality' of another artist: the worst thing you can say to a painter is—it reminds me of so and so. I know it sounds flakey but I firmly believe that painters, more that any other artists, become their work: what Isabelle Graw calls "quasi-persons".
There is the cultural aspect to painting also-what is seen as visually economical in one country is deemed Baroque in another: do you not get the sense from northern European artists such as Serge Jensen, Wilhelm Sasnal, Raoul De Keyser, that what they are doing is culturally 'felt by them, intuitive?
Artist and blogger Brian Dupont wrote the following in response to Rubinstein's provisional painting observation:
“Artists today are confronting an increasingly ramshackle future where aesthetic, political, economic, and ecological promises have been revealed as failures. If they are seeing a future where issues of scarcity become more urgent, materials must be recycled or scavenged from surplus, and long-held political standards become increasingly irrelevant, it would seem natural to see trends in painting (re)emerge that question formal equivalents of these standards. The long-term success of painting can be attributed to its ability to colonize and assimilate outside ideas and approaches, stretching form and content to the breaking point so that the project of the medium is ultimately made stronger. If a provisional vocabulary can provide a timely reinvigoration of the expression of individual concerns, that should be all the ambition anyone needs in a painting.”
Manifesto-like in his advocacy and belief in a future for painting, however, I am not completely in agreement with Dupont that, the Zeitgeist is the reason for a "provisional vocabulary" in contemporary painting per se. Although this is true within the contexts of online media, as English filmmaker Adam Curtis points out in an illuminating podcast(6] that considers the effect that exposure to an unrelenting proliferation of bite-size news media has had on the social psyche; the debilitating effect on individual power when we are faced with the such exposure to the failures of government and democracy; and the lack of power to alter the trajectory of a failed socio-political system: Facebook and Twitter commentary have become our protest and soother from real political action. But to put painting into this bracket is a bit of a stretch. Painters that perform this provisional aesthetic always seem divorced from the outside world. However, there is an argument that the painter already brings the outside world into the studio, 'in person', as there is an equivalent argument that the Zeitgeist is left outside the door as soon as the painter enters the studio.
There is also the fact that Rubinstein's provisional painting posse are a very established crew, whereas this 'provisionality' that he promotes is more adaptive to art school, where process is retained and art objects are viewed as fugitive. Rubenstein's definition of a provisional painting aesthetic is ill-defined. 'Being provisional' in your art practice could be exemplified by 'moments' rather than something that to as a signature. Is that not what 'being provisional' means, momentary? For instance, English artist Merlin Carpenter's parodic opening at Reena Spaulings, New York, in 2007, when he turned up to his opening with a bucket of black paint and proceeded to slap-dash slogans onto in situ blank canvases, such as DIE COLLECTOR SCUM, could be described as performing provisional painting? Provisional painting could also suggest perishable artworks, such as Chris Martin's 'Bread Paintings'. Or provisional painting could be illustrated by how a usually considered and precise Irish artist like Mark Swords, would paint a work like Forgery (image next page!), what I described in a previous text as a "real 'spanner' in the works: however well the composition holds the painting together, the 'badly' mixed primary colours revisit Picasso's assertion that the creche art class is where art begins, and ends." [7] Provisionality in painting could be answered by Wilhelm Sasnal whom, in an interview was asked the following question: "What is the longest you have spent on a painting?" Sasnal answered honestly: "three days."
In this 'era of the curator' there is a belief that works that are 'provisional' are more malleable to a wider range of contexts. Such discursive potential as 'The Impossibility of Painting' is a curator's wet dream: "As French curator Jean-Charles Vergne puts it, De Keyser's work 'constantly asserts the impossibility of painting, free of touch-ups, mistakes, accidents, set on laying bare the seams, the second tries and the failures. ... [There is a constant stuttering in the painting.'" [9] Perhaps the painter, who threads the provisional aesthetic line, offers the potential to be staged within an array of theoretical frameworks that test language and taste to their semiotic and formalist limits. If there is a such thing as 'provisional painting' it is being fostered by curators, or for that matter gallerists, who can afford such'provisionality' within their stable of earner-artists. With a medium that is closer to the art market than most, the parameters for expressive liberties are narrow, but that doesn't mean shallow.
