Return to 'realism' in painting

[Adrian II]

Today I went to the 'Kunsthal' museum in Rotterdam to see a exposition of over a hundred new (after 2000) paintings by realist painters. Some familiar names were represented: Lucian Freud, Eric Fischl, Marlene Dumas. Some totally unknown. Most were very interesting.

The name of the exposition was 'Long live painting'. It was meant as yet another celebration of the 'return to painting' or 'return to realism', an apparent trend in modern art. Charles Saatchi made it 'official', a gew years back, when he organised the first exposition centred uniquely on this theme.

Painting has often been declared dead. Nonetheless, there appears to be a worldwide return to painting; it seems that more artists are painting than in previous decades. Better still, most try their hand at the recently most vifilied genre of all, the human portrait.

The catalogue states that this renewed interest has come about in reaction to the onslaught of manipulated (digital) imagery in today's culture. From the works shown in Rotterdam, I came away with the impression that modern artists have huge difficulties when trying to dissociate themselves from this manipulated 'reality' and find their way (back) to their own observations, impressions and images and put them down on canvas.

Most of all, I was impressed by Eric Fischl's Bathroom Scene #2. Beautiful, haunting stuff. If you Google around for Fischl and the Krefeld project you will find more information on what is transpiring in today's realism.

So, what do you guys think of this development? Discuss. Fall out. Mount a barricade or two, this is art after all.

Eric Fischl, Bathroom Scene #2, 2003

[Papewaio]

I don't think realism died, it was hit by the invention of the camera. I think it has been a matter of those who prefer portraits and landscapes grabbing a camera over a brush.

Now with the ability to manipulate images with computers it is other works of the brush that are feeling the impact.

[ShadeHonestus]

Very interested in the return to realism. If I had to go to one more showing which featured either a need for 3-D glasses or 50 grams of cocaine to understand how the piece could represent anything...well, I'd probably quit going. I was also very annoyed by the photo eye's transcendence to being canonized as art proper and overshadowing the paintbrush.


I remember my first modern art showing that I saw, I believe I was 6 at the time and it was in Pittsburg. It literally made me physically ill. When we got to the hotel that night, on the wall, a modern art piece. It would have been a long night if service hadn't brought the extra sheet to hang.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Painting me taking a dump would definitely be haunting art (how long must I hold this *grunt* pose), but I can at least understand it better than that abstract Rorschach mess some refer to as "modern art". Thanks for the google tip.

[Adrian II]

@ Papewaio. But how do you explain the revival of the portrait? Camera's didn't get worse in the last five years, they only got better. Besides, visual artists have accommodated quite well to their arrival. Particularly the lazy ones...

@ ShadeHonestus. I hear you, brother. You get to the point where one more showcase filled with ping pong balls or oliphant droppings can provoke genuine, physical anger in a man. It's an insult to your intelligence.

As for your infantile trauma in Pittsburgh - I think a reproduction of Munch's The Cry or some really bloody Rubens on the wall wouldn't be suitable for a six year old either. That would be altogether too.. figurative.

@ Hosakawa Tito. Quite. Though by the way you tell it, your taking a dump would probably result in a Rorschach mess as well.

[ShadeHonestus]

That would be altogether too.. figurative.

At least the poo flinging monkey's at the Zoo the next day were literal and helped me recover.

[Hosakawa Tito]

I like this one. I must see if I can get a print.

[Adrian II]

At least the poo flinging monkey's at the Zoo the next day were literal and helped me recover.

And I reckon you weren't in two minds as to who were the better faeces-artists either.

But how about discerning quality in a painting? This used to be a real theoretical problem for me. After years of study, lonely hours of oxygen-deprived contemplation on mountaintops and consultation with the wisest and sharpest minds of mankind, I have come to the conclusion that I'm ass when it comes to painting. I can't really, profoundly explain to someone else why I find a painting good or bad. I really have only one criterion: do I keep looking at a painting or not?

Adrian keeps looking (and coming back) = painting good
Adrian doesn't bother looking twice = painting bad

Works for me.

[Adrian II]

I like this one. I must see if I can get a print.

Truly fascinating, that project. The Germans put a museum at his disposal which he culd turn into a villa. He then hired two actors and asked them to live together for three days in the villa. He took 2000 photographs of the duo, which he based his paintings off.

So, these are actors, they are just acting a relationship. That gives rise to the first issue. How many of us are in effect acting their relationship instead of living it?

Take the picture you posted. I have been that guy in the chair, more than once. What was I thinking? What was my woman thinking? How far are their thoughts apart, how far are they emotionally removed from their partners?
Is the essence of a 'good' relationship that it can endure this seeming split, that two fantasy worlds can exist side by side in it, that they can co-exist without colliding?

[Hosakawa Tito]

Your criteria for what makes a good painting is as legitimate as any high falutin art critic snob. If it holds your interest, and the more you look the more you see or sense, then it's good art. If you need some critic to explain it, and all you see is a dead baby's arm holding an apple, well.....tell the artist not to quit his day job.

That one does remind me of my wife. I was always waiting for her. If we had to be there at 6, I had to tell her 4, so we'd be on time.

[ShadeHonestus]

I actually embrace that same criteria for the most part. People look at me with a little trepidation when I tell them this next bit, but I can almost rate a paintings significance to me by a kind of a visual inducement of the olfactory often resulting in a memory or relating to something in the piece even in the minutia.

Like the painting linked to by Hosakawa Tito, I swear I could hear a certain lady's voice and smell paloma picasso...I think it was called. I can definitely recall the feel of the light as it came through the window at our favorite retreat.

Its not by coincidence that most of my favorite pieces relate to work I've done, my favorite pursuits, in contrast to my current employment . Considered low brow by 'society' artists, most encompass those that come from people on the rez or older works like those of Charles M. Russel, a rather interesting individual in his own rite.

[DemonArchangel]

Why realism Adrian?

It's simple: People got sick of the abstract. They don't want to see the abstract anymore, because it's been around for too long.

[Adrian II]

Why realism Adrian?
It's simple: People got sick of the abstract. They don't want to see the abstract anymore, because it's been around for too long.

Isn't that wishful thinking?

Abstract painting has been a huge success throughout the previous century; it appealed to many millions and it brought in millions of bucks in galleries and auctions. But its most important contribution to painting is that it changed our perspective on the process and function of painting.

The realist paintings which I saw yesterday would have been literally unthinkable without the preceding 'abstract century' in which painters broke down reality into its constituent parts in the eye of the beholder: colour, dimensions, shape, surface, context. This tendency has always been as much a part of visual art as realism, going right back to the cave paintings of Lascaux which, in their own way, broke down the animal images into essentials.

I think it is fair to say that Lucian Freud, who is considered the apogee of modern portrait painting, owes as much to the twentieth century as he does to the 17th or 19th centuries. He is certainly in debt to Picasso, whom he knew and worked with, even though he would have loved to just kill that overbearing father-figure.