project framework
individualism
The painter represents the archaic trope of the artist of the past. Locked up in their studios, painters have created representations of the world to enchant the individual with sublime beauty. The medium of painting is rooted in a western history of individualism and human mastery. Until today, painting has defended a position as a convenient luxury commodity, nestling on the cold walls of art institutions and sewing the gaze of the observer to its precious surface.
historicity
A lot of us might have already dealt with the metaphorical blank canvas, but ironically, the canvas is never blank for a painter. Painting always comes with the ballast of history, a possible territory for making connections, formulating critique, and approaching dialogues beyond time and space. With the end of modernism, painting became a richly tilled field for critical investigations about the role painting holds in a western capitalist economy-driven society and art institutions.
Self-imposed critique of the medium through artistic practices often resulted in formal approaches that challenged the boundaries of what painting can be and can become. Therefore, the historical concept of oil paintings as the canonical medium of fine arts is often neglected and reinvented in these media negotiations. It seems too obvious advocating for an uncritical continuation of the past; its connectedness to contemporary networks appear too hushed, and too mumbled are its calls for change. Oil painting sparks ideas of conservatism.
shifting from within
Outside of art discourses, painting often still generates ideas of the role of art in society. Through the research project Beyond the Agitated Margins of painting, I explore existing understandings of what painting is in order to suggest propositions for what painting can be. In imagining the object of individualism and capitalism differently, a methodology can be established to pose speculations about ways of living and being together; exploring alternative histories and economies through painting.
Outside of art discourses, painting often still generates ideas of the role of art in society. Through the research project Beyond the Agitated Margins of painting, I explore existing understandings of what painting is in order to suggest propositions for what painting can be. In imagining the object of individualism and capitalism differently, a methodology can be established to pose speculations about ways of living and being together; exploring alternative histories and economies through painting.
multiplicity of agency
We can approach painting through the lens of ‘new materialist’ thinking. This umbrella term links theory that understands the matter of things as active and effect-producing instead of as passive and inert.1
A new materialist lens allows us to question the human-centred historical trope of the liveliness of painting, which has existed in the theorisation of art since early modernity. During the Renaissance, painters were expected to animate the representation on the surface through their creative agency and by a knowledgeable and controlled handling of their materials. Evoking a superficial liveliness was an “aesthetic ideal”.2
However, with a material-sensitive perspective on the historical medium of oil painting, we can perceive painting as an inherently transformative medium. It consists of an interlocking system of multiple layers of different materials that interact. As the sociologist Fernando Domínguez Rubio suggests, the materiality of artworks plays a constitutive role in how they generate effects that inform their role in institutions and their publicness.3
Proposition: Through painting, we can challenge the anthropocentric perspective attached to its western history. Imagination can help us to make sense of painting beyond the intentions of human representations.
the transformative in the rigid
The assemblage of multiple materials such as canvas, lining, frame, paint and binding agents – each with different material properties – in historical configurations of oil paintings causes these material layers to continually be on the move. Institutional environments were designed to numb the effects of this agency, shifting it from dramatic effects to subtle ones. Today, from a material point of view, oil paintings are generally considered the most docile artwork in museums.4 Successful conservation strategies aim to sustain individual aesthetics carried out by the painter and the economic value of the commodity.
The assemblage of multiple materials such as canvas, lining, frame, paint and binding agents – each with different material properties – in historical configurations of oil paintings causes these material layers to continually be on the move. Institutional environments were designed to numb the effects of this agency, shifting it from dramatic effects to subtle ones. Today, from a material point of view, oil paintings are generally considered the most docile artwork in museums.4 Successful conservation strategies aim to sustain individual aesthetics carried out by the painter and the economic value of the commodity.
Proposition: Through painting, we can observe the transformative of the rigid. Imagination can help us focus on transformative potential beneath and within capitalism's rigid system.
1 Simon Choat, “Science Agency and Ontology: A Historical-Materialist Response to New Materialism,” Sage Journals 66, no. 4 (2017): 1-2, accessed March 24, 2024, https://doi- org.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/10.1177/0032321717731926.
2 Isabelle Graw, The Love of Painting: Genealogy of a Success Medium (London: Sternberg Press, 2018), 23.
3 Fernando Domínguez Rubio, “Preserving the Unpreservable: Docile and Unruly Objects at MoMA,” Theory and Society 43, no. 6 (2014): 617, accessed March 24, 2024, http:// www.jstor.org/stable/43694738.
4 Fernando Domínguez Rubio, “Preserving the Unpreservable: Docile and Unruly Objects at MoMA,” 623.
2 Isabelle Graw, The Love of Painting: Genealogy of a Success Medium (London: Sternberg Press, 2018), 23.
3 Fernando Domínguez Rubio, “Preserving the Unpreservable: Docile and Unruly Objects at MoMA,” Theory and Society 43, no. 6 (2014): 617, accessed March 24, 2024, http:// www.jstor.org/stable/43694738.
4 Fernando Domínguez Rubio, “Preserving the Unpreservable: Docile and Unruly Objects at MoMA,” 623.