Unbecoming Painting

Andre Brodyk; Tom  Loveday; Mark Titmarsh; Sean Lowry

Unbecoming Painting

2012

By Mark Titmarsh, Andre Brodyk, Tom Loveday, and Sean Lowry

A catalog essay co written with four others for our exhibition at MOP Projects, Sydney Australia, in January 2012....Read more

MOP Projects 2/39 Abercrombie St Chippendale Sydney, NSW 2008 Wednesday 25 January to Sunday 12 February 2012 Gallery hours Thursday to Sunday 1–6 pm André Brodyk Sean Lowry Tom Loveday Mark Shorter Mark Titmarsh Re-extended Painting 02 9699 3955 mop@mop.org.au www.mop.org.au Re-extended painting Mark Titmarsh (Editor) Published by André Brodyk, Sean Lowry, Tom Loveday, Mark Shorter, Mark Titmarsh in conjunction with MOP Projects, Sydney, Australia, January 2012 Designed by Brittany Denes Set in Helvetica Neue ISBN 978-0-9871483-3-9 MOP Projects is assisted by the NSW Government through Arts NSW. Afiliations Andrè Brodyk Humanities Research Institute University of Newcastle (UoN) Associate Professor Bernie Carroll School of Chemistry & Molecular Biosciences University of Queensland (UQ) Dr Michael Christie School of Chemistry & Molecular Biosciences (UQ) Professor Christopher Grof School of Environmental and Life Sciences (UoN) Joseph Enright School of Environmental and Life Sciences (UoN) Thomas Loveday Faculty of the Built Environment University of New South Wales Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia Sean Lowry The University of Newcastle Mark Shorter Special thanks to Jade Carden Australia Council of the Arts Queen Street Studios Mark Titmarsh Special thanks to Corinne Sellers

What is painting? Why is it meaningful to claim that an artwork is still a painting within the interdisciplinary and pluralist cultural landscapes of the early 21st century? What can the idea of painting offer us in a time dominated by post-conceptual, dematerialised, digital, and performative tendencies in contemporary art practice? Unlike the stylistic permutations that deined the evolution of painting within modernism, more recent art histories have increasingly traded discipline speci ic categorisation for critically or conceptually deined genealogies. As Costello and Vickery note, ‘the medium or material constitution of the work of art has tended to become UNBECOMING PAINTING Andrè Brodyk, Sean Lowry, Tom Loveday, Mark Shorter, Mark Titmarsh However painting was never simply mute matter since it emerged from a negotiation of autopoietic material or matter as an event in time. The dimension of time quite simply allows things that are, to be other than they are, to change or become. So becoming underpins the material and ideological basis of what we nominate as ‘re-extended painting’. It suggests an anticipatory quality, where something might yet be gained from painting in all of its guises, in its traditional sense, and how it is yet to be understood. This exhibition argues that painting, which is to say the idea of painting, is a valuable and effective mode of framing for various media in relation to the presence and absence of paint applied to canvas. This idea of painting is now potentially instantiated as a structural place, a performative action, or a remediated form containing no independent essence. Is there any space in this idea of painting for the traditional wall-hung pigment on lat canvas? increasingly relative to the means, location and context of utterance; and the ‘visual’ aspect of that act and that context need not be dominant or explicit, and in some cases is not even apparent’. In the preface to The Tradition of the New, Harold Rosenberg responded to a criticism of his writing that claimed that he had only considered wall-hung paintings in his schema. Rosenberg argued that he had not thereby excluded ‘events’, for modernist painting, especially Abstract Expressionism, also constituted an event. While not speciically The idea of painting does not rest within any medium speciic location or stylistic permutation. Once the cultural legacy of Greenbergian ‘purity’ was discarded, painting was free to mutate into heterogeneous and individually developed multiplicities. Strategic repetition is arguably easier to transpose to new cultural and technological contexts than material or stylistic nostalgia. As critic Jan Verwoert recently asked: ‘Why are conceptual artists painting again? Because they think it’s a good idea.’ 1 Images: Front cover: Mark Shorter, Song for Heysen, still from digital video, 2012 Inside fold: Mark Titmarsh, Music, acrylic paint on paper (dustjackets), Photo by Arthur Georgeson 2011, 120 x 80.5 cm. Inside panel: (Top) Andrè Brodyk, Peripatetic Painting, Genetically modiied (gene silenced), emergent painting (dimensions emergent & temporal), 2012 (Middle) Tom Loveday, The Eyes of Yayoi Kusama #15, acrylic on canvas, 2012, 60 x 45 cm (Bottom) Sean Lowry, Silent Republic, design for overpainted wall painting (dimensions variable), 2012 1. Jan Verwoert. ‘Why are Conceptual Artists Painting Again? Because They think It’s a Good Idea’, Afterall 12, Winter 2005, http://www. afterall.org/journal/issue.12/ why.are.conceptual.artists. painting.again.because. This exhibition pursues painting’s extension into other media contexts in order to demonstrate how painting can become something other than itself. Underlying this extension is a fundamental recognition that painters do ‘think-work’ through the performance of painting and the agency of thoughtful making. So we might say that the ‘death’ of painting was never pathological since it continues to work as a homeopathic prescription for the serial- ised rebirth of painting in ever varying monstrations. explained by him, this means that the event of painting was in some way independent of its medium and the idea of painting is furthermore released from its adherence to traditional easel based conventions.

André Brodyk Sean Lowry Tom Loveday Mark Shorter Mark Titmarsh Afiliations Andrè Brodyk Humanities Research Institute University of Newcastle (UoN) Associate Professor Bernie Carroll School of Chemistry & Molecular Biosciences University of Queensland (UQ) Dr Michael Christie School of Chemistry & Molecular Biosciences (UQ) Professor Christopher Grof School of Environmental and Life Sciences (UoN) Joseph Enright School of Environmental and Life Sciences (UoN) Thomas Loveday Faculty of the Built Environment University of New South Wales Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia Sean Lowry The University of Newcastle Mark Shorter Special thanks to Jade Carden Australia Council of the Arts Queen Street Studios Mark Titmarsh Special thanks to Corinne Sellers MOP Projects 2/39 Abercrombie St Chippendale Sydney, NSW 2008 Wednesday 25 January to Sunday 12 February 2012 Gallery hours Thursday to Sunday 1–6 pm 02 9699 3955 mop@mop.org.au www.mop.org.au Designed by Brittany Denes Set in Helvetica Neue ISBN 978-0-9871483-3-9 Re-extended painting Mark Titmarsh (Editor) Published by André Brodyk, Sean Lowry, Tom Loveday, Mark Shorter, Mark Titmarsh in conjunction with MOP Projects, Sydney, Australia, January 2012 MOP Projects is assisted by the NSW Government through Arts NSW. Re-extended Painting UNBECOMING PAINTING Andrè Brodyk, Sean Lowry, Tom Loveday, Mark Shorter, Mark Titmarsh What is painting? Why is it meaningful to claim that an artwork is still a painting within the interdisciplinary and pluralist cultural landscapes of the early 21st century? What can the idea of painting offer us in a time dominated by post-conceptual, dematerialised, digital, and performative tendencies in contemporary art practice? Unlike the stylistic permutations that deined the evolution of painting within modernism, more recent art histories have increasingly traded discipline speciic categorisation for critically or conceptually deined genealogies. As Costello and Vickery note, ‘the medium or material constitution of the work of art has tended to become increasingly relative to the means, location and context of utterance; and the ‘visual’ aspect of that act and that context need not be dominant or explicit, and in some cases is not even apparent’. However painting was never simply mute matter since it emerged from a negotiation of autopoietic material or matter as an event in time. The dimension of time quite simply allows things that are, to be other than they are, to change or become. So becoming underpins the material and ideological basis of what we nominate as ‘re-extended painting’. It suggests an anticipatory quality, where something might yet be gained from painting in all of its guises, in its traditional sense, and how it is yet to be understood. This exhibition argues that painting, which is to say the idea of painting, is a valuable and effective mode of framing for various media in relation to the presence and absence of paint applied to canvas. This idea of painting is now potentially instantiated as a structural place, a performative action, or a remediated form containing no independent essence. Is there any space in this idea of painting for the traditional wall-hung pigment on lat canvas? In the preface to The Tradition of the New, Harold Rosenberg responded to a criticism of his writing that claimed that he had only considered wall-hung paintings in his schema. Rosenberg argued that he had not thereby excluded ‘events’, for modernist painting, especially Abstract Expressionism, also constituted an event. While not speciically explained by him, this means that the event of painting was The idea of painting does not rest within any medium in some way independent of its speciic location or stylistic permutation. Once the medium and the idea of painting cultural legacy of Greenbergian ‘purity’ was discarded, is furthermore released from its painting was free to mutate into heterogeneous adherence to traditional easel and individually developed multiplicities. Strategic repetition is arguably easier to transpose to new based conventions. cultural and technological contexts than material or stylistic nostalgia. As critic Jan Verwoert recently asked: ‘Why are conceptual artists painting again? Because they think it’s a good idea.’1 This exhibition pursues painting’s extension into other media contexts in order to demonstrate how painting can become something other than itself. Underlying this extension is a fundamental recognition that painters do ‘think-work’ through the performance of painting and the agency of thoughtful making. So we might say that the ‘death’ of painting was never pathological since it continues to work as a homeopathic prescription for the serialised rebirth of painting in ever varying monstrations. 1. Jan Verwoert. ‘Why are Conceptual Artists Painting Again? Because They think It’s a Good Idea’, Afterall 12, Winter 2005, http://www. afterall.org/journal/issue.12/ why.are.conceptual.artists. painting.again.because. Images: Front cover: Mark Shorter, Song for Heysen, still from digital video, 2012 Inside fold: Mark Titmarsh, Music, acrylic paint on paper (dustjackets), Photo by Arthur Georgeson 2011, 120 x 80.5 cm. Inside panel: (Top) Andrè Brodyk, Peripatetic Painting, Genetically modiied (gene silenced), emergent painting (dimensions emergent & temporal), 2012 (Middle) Tom Loveday, The Eyes of Yayoi Kusama #15, acrylic on canvas, 2012, 60 x 45 cm (Bottom) Sean Lowry, Silent Republic, design for overpainted wall painting (dimensions variable), 2012

O 18 de Brumário Karl Marx, nasceu a 5 de Maio de 1918 e para além de ser um notório revolucionário socialista, foi também um filósofo, sociólogo, jornalista e historiador. É dos grandes defensores do socialismo comunista e acredita que as sociedades progridem através da luta de classes-entre as classes que controla os meios de produção, a burguesia, e a classe trabalhadora, o proletariado-e que gradualmente o capitalismo, devido às tensões internas antagonistas, acabaria por dar lugar ao socialismo. O livro 18 de Brumário, é uma análise sobre os acontecimentos, entre 1848 e 1851 na França, que levaram ao golpe de estado em que Luís Bonaparte, chega ao poder, e se torna imperador, à semelhança do seu tio, Napoleão I que foi o líder político e militar durante os finais da Revolução Francesa. Apesar de não ser a obra mais célebre de Marx, não deixa de ser uma obra muito importante, abordando temas chaves ao socialismo como: a luta de classes, revolução proletária e ditadura do proletariado que segundo o autor, é o último estágio em antes de atingir o comunismo, ou seja, uma sociedade sem classes, onde seria regida por uma livre associação de produtores. Nesta obra, é ainda explicado os papéis que os partidos políticos desempenham, analisa os mecanismos que as classes distintas utilizam para atuar no mundo político, como por exemplo a aliança entre os camponeses e o proletariado, a forma como a burguesia exercia o seu poder e realiza uma caracterização da essência do bonapartismo. A análise feita ao governo francês da altura (1848-1951), foca-se principalmente na existência de dois poderes que dominavam a sociedade francesa: de um lado tínhamos, o Estado representado por Luís Bonaparte, que usava o seu parentesco a Napoleão I para se glorificar e obter o poder sobre o povo, tornando-se no primeiro presidente francês a ser eleito por voto direto, e do lado oposto temos a burguesia republicana, "que há muito se considerava a herdeira legítima da Monarquia República" (MARX, 2006) e que mantinha o poder sobre as demais classes. As ideias que o proletariado tinham para resolver os problemas sociais eram considerados por grande parte da população, ilusões utópicas nas quais era necessário pôr um fim imediato. O que a classe trabalhadora não percebeu foi o reagrupamento das velhas forças da sociedade, que tinham encontrado o apoio inesperado da massa da nação, superando o proletariado no nível de influência política e social que possuíam. No entanto o proletariado não se deixou ficar, tendo respondido com a Insurreição de Junho, da qual saíram perdedores passando assim para o segundo plano da revolução.

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Unbecoming Painting