Happy Month of May. After looking at sculptures in April, I wanted to get into architecture. However, we’ve had quite a few 3D elements in our faces recently, so I chose a different direction and dimension to go in.
The May Finds are all focused on paintings.
We’ve all seen the classics: the people, the landscapes, etc. So we’re focusing just on abstract painting. Everyone sees something completely different when they look at an abstract painting.
The Ideel Art website and blog has a great discussion on what is a painting verse what is painting.
“In 1890, French painter Maurice Denis famously said that “a painting –before being a warhorse, a naked woman, or some story or other – is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order.” Yet, as appealing as this simple definition is, over a century later, the debate over what constitutes a painting is more heated than ever. Time and time again paintings emerge as the prestige medium for visual artists, fetching astronomical sums at auction that few sculptures could hope to rival, never mind the humble drawing or print. However, in an increasingly globalized art world, and one characterized by boundary-breaking and interdisciplinary artistic practices, the fine line between painting and related media is not always easy to discern.
Indeed, most artworks that are commonly classed as paintings are created using pigment suspended in a liquid, whether it be oil, water, acrylic, or a mixture of solvents, as in the case of ink.
And yet, with artists increasingly shedding the stylistic and formal constraints of old, whether by combining graphic and more painterly techniques, or, as in the case of artists such as Jean Buffet and Anselm Kiefer, by using a mixture of paint and other media, hard-and-fast criteria for what constitutes a painting become more and more elusive. Indeed, with so many factors to consider, from the support to the media, technique, or style used, the line between painting and other visual art forms is less clear than ever before, leaving today’s painters faced with a blank canvas, and the opportunity to reinvent an age-old medium.”
To read their full analysis on ‘What is A Painting?’ click here.
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