Keywords:
The liveness of painting
Angency in painting
The subjectivity of painting
The Value of Liveliness: Painting as an Index of Agency in the New Economy
Isabelle Graw
This term, I began to think about the conceptual nature of painting itself in contemporary art. Why do paintings continue to fetch high prices at auction? Why did painting not disappear with the development of photography and AI technology? This essay laid out a lot of thoughtful insight into the vitality of contemporary painting from the perspective of its relationship with the new economy.
1. Painting, as a conglomeration of the artist's work, allow the viewer to feel the presence of the artist through the physical form.
"Our attention is drawn to the physicality of these signs, and this happens regardless of how they refer to something, iconically or symbolically. Irrespective of what they depict or refer to, they will be experienced in their physicality as a manifestation of the absent author."(Isabelle Graw, 2015, P2)
"Rather, the sense of liveness we get from painting results from the fact that the life and the work time of the respective artists have been spent on it. Indeed painting often seems to be enriched by the artist or through "living labor", to use a Marxian concept."(Isabelle Graw, 2015, P3)
" The labor and the lifetime of the painter are seemingly stored in it."(Isabelle Graw, 2015, P3)
2. Liveliness as a valuable resource in new economy
"Since painting is able to produce the sensation that it has captured living labor, this could explain its current popularity in our new economy, which has been alternatively described by social scientists as a “post-Fordist condition” (Paolo Virno), as “cognitive capitalism” (Yann Moulier-Boutang), or as “network-capitalism“ (Luc Boltanski/Eve Chiapello)" (Isabelle Graw 2015, P3)
"Seen from this angle it is the way we live that becomes commodified. Think only of social-media sites like Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook and how they market our “life events.” I believe that painting is particularly well positioned in such an economy since it gives the impression of being saturated with the life of its author" (Isabelle Graw 2015, P3)
We can't equate painting with a picture on canvas any longer.
Note that each attempt to question painting’s boundaries in the past ended up contributing to its revitalization.
3.She refers to Francis Picabia's work as if it were the addition of the ready-made to the painting. Rather than seeing this as a threat to the integrity of the painting, she tends to understand it as the ready-made inhaling a new life.
"It is not only a manifestation of how the boundaries of painting exploded, but stands for painting’s fusion with something external to it: a consumer object" (Isabelle Graw, 2015, P3)
I had a similar feeling when I went to see the Goldsmiths' exhibition Testament. There were only two paintings in the whole exhibition, the paintings were not overwhelmed but blended in. At this point it felt like the boundaries of painting had expanded.
4. Even after-war artists limited the artist's own authority in the picture through physical control, mechanical painting, etc. But the more the artist tried to eliminate himself, the more the painting painted itself. The painting gained more subjectivity.
"In other words, all those manifold attempts by postwar painting to undermine the authority of the artist-subject with the help of various anti-subjective procedures, nevertheless, allowed the artist-subject to enter through the back door" (Isabelle Graw, 2015, P5)
And this is also true for conceptual paintings that consist of a mechanic, delegated, or nonlabor —their use of “dead labour” will end up being credited to the individual labour of the artist and thereby still allow for vitalist projections of liveliness. (Isabelle Graw, 2015, P5)
4. The concept of 'dead labour' in painting reminds me of Andy Warhol's industry, who was embarking on his image and object multiplications in the early 1960s. A number of artist began questioning whether submiting art objects to mechanical reproduction is an unalloyed evidence of subjective expression of artist who manipulated form behind. So the multiplication and the wide use of machine enhanced subjectivity of the art object.
Books and resources
Isabelle Graw, 2015. The Value of Liveliness: Painting as an Index of Agency in the New Economy. [Online]
Available at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/574dd51d62cd942085f12091/t/5f67c706d45f307089bbdb46/1600636679256/Isabelle+Graw_The+value+of+liveliness_painting+as+an+index+of+agency+in+the+new+economy.pdf