Tuesday, August 20, 2013

JAMES ELKINS - What Painting Is



As painters say, the paint seems to have a mind of its own– it "wants" to do certain things, and it "resists" the painter.  Some artists have tried to discipline paint, to learn its inner rules, and to control it from  a position of knowledge.  Others have learned to let paint do what it wants, so that painting becomes a collaboration between the artist's desire and the unpredictable tendencies of the paint.  In the first category belong the majority of premodern painters, the academicians, conservators and chemists, technically-minded artists, color theorists and chemical engineers.  In the second belong the Expressionists and Neo-Expressionists, and the majority of contemporary painters.  They are agreed on one principal: painting is metamorphosis.


Coagulating, cohobating, macerating, reverberating: Pg 121