Surrealism in the 20" century was largely disposed to experiencing the fictional in both hallucinatory and dystopian and utopian dreams. These were subjected to the rule of the random and the collision and juxtaposition in both fate and desire. That was yesterday’s Surrealism, but todays is factual, almost of a documentary nature of both the biographical and the autobiographical, contextualised in the ‘every day’. How? Just look on any digital advice, split screens, and social media avalanche in which we have become willing slaves to the AI God of tech United!
To face the Painting of today we have to embrace all about our century to realise that the abstract and the figurative, the portrait and the landscape (seascape/skyscape etc.) endorse the 21st century and that it is our era of looking at someone or something ‘in the face, eye to eye, setting one’s face against the expected, never saving ones face from losing one’s face……. Over kill? I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Our ‘portraiture’ today is not literal but about facing up to our responsibilities as Painters and facing down our opponents I We today transcribe what we see right under our noses in front of us and behind us. We are part of the selfie generation, but we are trying “to wrench back social discourse in a way that is not absorbed by our worship of the mobile phone etc. Watch every body diving into their phones rather than look around them, let alone have conversations!! We agitate against the anti-social, but we are not ideologically loading up a political agenda like the 1920s and 1930s. We are reinventing galleries where and when we exhibit, we can realise our potential as a ‘Practitioner Art community’ ready to communicate, where painting now is no longer paralysed by the ancient morgue of the museum. Transformation by a gathering in a community is a demonstration that a gallery event can be a social celebration; surely, we don’t have to wait for the annual town festival to show what we can do next to the floral design of fruit or onions?
Traditionally Painting is the home of modernist stylization, but we are the bedrock of the non-transient and not impermanent. Our 21st century offers displacement and paradox and anomalies for us to divulge. Indeed, we are low tech but a growing practitioner community that has been particularly significant in the UK. En plein air or in their own spaces we have emerged as non-airbrushers who don’t need to rely on Art College to spark a light. However, to those who have been damaged by a non-painting curriculum, start all over! Why? Painters are the measuring stick of all Art media because we choose between Art health and Art status because we brush against the Art Authorities and may even be expelled from them. En masse we explore our own sense of identity because of our medium has been subjected to stigma and exclusion, and because identity seeking (which is a zeitgeist of post-Cold War Europe) is key to unlocking what forces were used (and why) to stigmatise Paint in the first place. In fact, most Painters, if push comes to shove, would choose isolation rather than compromise, but we want to know how to unravel this secretive process and who were involved and not just why they couldn’t resist ‘wider political imperatives’. Perhaps it is because we exclude the white noise of our ‘demeaned delineated social production that involves the self-aggrandizing consumer convenience and connivance of the Art market? But we also respect our generation of Painters who may have taken a permanent exit from the industry of Art for better, and younger Painters to further their journey? We also respect that the West’s way of demoralising the Painting medium to undermine the Eastern Cold War bloc for its factories of over-production by ‘Yes men’! But TATT (The Art Top Table) you can’t live in the past anymore! You also can't fixate against Painting today and live off that reputation too! The world does not need a further sacrifice on the high altar of the past! So don’t expect Painting to swing your way just because it has the capacity as a defence mechanism and a cultural insurer! Painting may have been unwittingly crucial in helping to destabilize Soviet ideological certainty, but this cultural war may still provide a moral lesson: You can’t future proof Art or permanently control its creative approach to life liberty and pursuit of happiness! That seems to be a truism that we only recognise when it’s staring us in the face. That old tradition of ‘staring’ back at the viewer without batting an eyelid is as strong as ever. Painting will not back-down eyeballing you so it’s up to the court of public opinion to stare-back! Both the practitioner and the viewer will always have a tug of war, but don’t need a ‘go all testosterone’ and fling Painting out when you can make a connection and individualise Art to you! Joining up does not mean purely pointillism in the 21st century, where we are both infiltrator and exfiltrator, where we are the ghost in the machine!
Stare back!
We say hold that thought after you have held that stare! Feast your eyes that can be glued to the Painting. There’s the non-blinking stare holding your viewers’ attention without any brush-off or it being easy on the eye It gets in your face that leads some to withdraw!? It is not that the viewer is simply bored or uninvolved, it's more like they are not ready to jump in! Keeping a safe distance when you can gaze without needing to exercise the other part of the brain means, you have taken a step back too far! Look at me! LOOK AT ME… demands the Painting! Don’t wimp-out or back down or back-out! I believe this quality of being required to “freeze! and don’t move” shows us that Painting wasn’t losing its appeal when TATT reduced its impact and status in the 1980s because it was supposedly predictable and banal and a formal cul-de-sac, but in fact Painting was asking too much of the viewer and Artist and the cultural players couldn’t keep up with it! People confused “form’ with false man-made boundaries! Painting didn’t just evaporate, it distilled itself! Whilst the iron curtain was lowered by a symbolic breaking down of the Berlin Wall, the only memorable thing about it was the painted murals of resistance against any oppression, was daubed on the Western side of it demanding freedom for all! It was poignant that Painting that has never been so alienated from the Western Art scene was the defining symbol of freedom against Totalitarianism from the suffocating imposition of Soviet Agit prop, as well as publicly and intellectually subjected to being downgraded slow rolled by the West!??
Is there any Art medium that doesn’t do moulds for multiple versions or mass-produced prints for the high street, except the imperfect Painting, defined by its individual uniqueness? I'm sure there are others though….? Nowhere do we celebrate more individualism more in visual Art than Painting?? Without breaking silence that is framed for you to see your own image of anger, hostility, opportunity, betrayal, beauty and risk without flinching and without glazing over as if a box has been ticked why not engage? Make the connection, idiosyncracize it, make it yours, stand still for as long as you can and pull out before you are engulfed! Don’t be a victim of any Art, be ready to break borders, take it on! Never let it escape!... but still TATT can’t bring itself to keep up with change and mutation of it. Why? Is it worried that it will… lose face?
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