"..I once had this
idea of starting a magazine called Oil Painting. It wouldn't discuss
anything else, and a critic would write in the way a sports writer
would write when looking at tennis. He would say, Beautiful ground
stroke by God, look at the way he stroked that, and in that yellow,
that Naples yellow''*
*(Showing the View to a Blind Man:
Malcolm Morley talking to David Sylvester p15 Malcolm Morley
catalogue to accompany exhibition 11 Sept - 12 Oct 1990 Anthony
d'Offay Gallery, London ISBN 0 947564 32 2 )
There have been experiments in
painting 'live' (Malcolm Morley, whose words are quoted above,
once attempted to paint his version of Raphael's The School
of Athens in front of an audience). Painting as a spectator
sport may seem destined to failure ("now on Sky One: Painting
live from ACME Studios..") The idea runs counter to the
assumption that the audience for a painting will view the results,
not the activity. So there is a separation between the experience
of the artist, who makes the work, and for whom the emotional
attachment to the work, the energy, excitement, frustration and
suspense are most likely centred on the studio, and the
experience of the audience, viewing the work later on a gallery
wall. It would not be surprising if the audience felt a little
cheated, only allowed to see the aftermath of something, like
a football fan only allowed into the ground after the final whistle. The popularisation
of art's conceptual dimension has tended to mean that the audience's
first question on being confronted with unfamiliar art is What
does it mean? This project will defer that question. Rather
than asking why these artists paint and what the paintings mean,
we argue that the significance of their work can be better understood
through a careful consideration of what they do: the working
order, rhythm, habit and choices. This may bring closer together
the experiences of the artists and those of their audience.
Jeffrey Dennis