Painting Today

by

Painting Today, PhaidonPainting Today
Tony Godfrey, Phaidon Press, $75, 448 pages, hardcover

Every painting student within the last 40 years has been told painting is dead.  But we continue to surround ourselves with paintings, to visit museums and galleries, and to read books filled with images of paintings.  And the market still values paintings — Yue Minjun’s Execution, painted in 1985 and originally sold for $5,000 is now worth almost $6 million.

Author Tony Godfrey picks up on Art Today’s tradition, of using the prestige and magic of print, to effectively create a timeless capsule of paintings from the last forty years. His collection of paintings, arranged by theme, act as an introduction to the major movements in contemporary painting. His writing aims to pose as many questions as it does answer. A question like “Why do we surround ourselves with paintings?” is followed by brief but insightful backgrounds to the work presented. Godfrey shares Philip Guston’s history with the holocaust lending a new meaning to his cartoon characters clad in Klan masks.  He points to the literary motivations behind Cy Twombly’s paintings and their initially enigmatic scrawls of writing.

Godfrey themes deal with the obvious: figure, still life, abstraction, and landscape. But they also deal with the subtle: painting space (mental and physical space as experienced through time in a Franz Ackermann installation), and death and life (Dana Schutz’s painting of Michael Jackson’s autopsy). His writing is bold and positive, but scholastically humble and approachable. He writes in a section titled Painting Tomorrow, “we need words to help explain, enjoy and muse on painting, but we need always to keep coming back to the actual experience,” illustrating his passion for criticism but the importance of seeing a painting. Painting Today offers both.

Wang Guangyi, Great Criticism: Coca Cola, 1990-3, oil on canvas, 200 x 200 cm; Farber Collection, New York
Wang Guangyi, Great Criticism: Coca Cola, 1990-3, oil on canvas, 200 x 200 cm; Farber Collection, New YorkZhang Xiaogang, Big Family No. 1, 2001, oil on canvas, 200 x 300 cm, sold Sotheby’s 27 February 2008
Ida Applebroog, Installation at the Whitney Biennial, 1993 including Jack F: Forced to Eat His Own Excrement, 1992, oil and resin on canvas, four panels, overall 279.4 x 228.6 cm; and Kathy W: Is Told That if She Tells, Mommy Will Get Sick and Die, 1992, oil and resin on canvas, two panels, overall 279.4 x 182.9 cm
Ida Applebroog, Installation at the Whitney Biennial, 1993 including Jack F: Forced to Eat His Own Excrement, 1992, oil and resin on canvas, four panels, overall 279.4 x 228.6 cm; and Kathy W: Is Told That if She Tells, Mommy Will Get Sick and Die, 1992, oil and resin on canvas, two panels, overall 279.4 x 182.9 cm
Julie Mehretu, Black City, 2005, ink and acrylic on canvas, 308.8 x 487.7 cm
Julie Mehretu, Black City, 2005, ink and acrylic on canvas, 308.8 x 487.7 cm
Adriana Varejão, Entrance Figure III (Figura de Convite III), 2005, oil on canvas, 200 x 200 cm
Adriana Varejão, Entrance Figure III (Figura de Convite III), 2005, oil on canvas, 200 x 200 cm
Fernando Botero, Abu Ghraib 43 (Triptych), 2005, oil on canvas, three panels, each 130 x 96 cm
Fernando Botero, Abu Ghraib 43 (Triptych), 2005, oil on canvas, three panels, each 130 x 96 cm
Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing No. 1131, ‘Whirls and Twirls’ (Wadsworth), 2004. Acrylic on walls of museum staircase, 5.5 x 35 m (18¼ x 115 ft); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hanford CT
Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing No. 1131, ‘Whirls and Twirls’ (Wadsworth), 2004. Acrylic on walls of museum staircase, 5.5 x 35 m (18¼ x 115 ft); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hanford CT
Matthias Weischer, Oberlicht, 2006, oil and egg tempera on canvas, 120 x 150 cm (47¼ x 59 in)
Matthias Weischer, Oberlicht, 2006, oil and egg tempera on canvas, 120 x 150 cm (47¼ x 59 in)

– Chris Force

Chris Force is the founder and editor of ALARM Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter.