{Updated to add image credits, at bottom}
When I first read the title of the Seattle Art Museum’s show Target Practice: Painting Under Attack 1949–78 some months ago, I experienced a flood of emotions that read like a sentence. First it was excitement over “Target Practice: Painting” which mounted into frenzied joy when I got to “Under Attack” and then a cruel blow of disappointment at the end when I read the dates “1949-78.” Then anger. SAM was admirably endeavoring to examine the ubiquitous “attack” on painting in an original, major, traveling exhibition, but was stopping the examination in the 1970′s. How could this be?!? The opportunity to contextualize the attack on painting in a survey that spans modernism through the contemporary could not be more ripe; the fruit is barely attached to the tree it is so ready to burst at the seed. “Now now now!!!” I shouted emphatically to my dog and baby. “1949-2009!” (There was tail wagging and toothy grinning; I think they concur.)
Having already had a tumultuous relationship with an exhibition I had not yet seen, I entered into it yesterday with reluctant skepticism, willing it to be more than a finite art historical survey.
Incidentally, I left SAM yesterday with a renewed appreciation for the art historical survey.
Harnessing a new and improved group of international artists, Michael Darling presents the mid-century Attack on Painting as an art movement within the art historical lineage where one movement begets another in an evolutionary push towards modernity. He does it with gusto, and ultimately I found the curatorial work far more interesting than the art itself.
I walked from room to room, watching people engaged. They were not bumbling around in a stupor of boredom. They were reading the text placed two inches from the floor and up near the ceiling. They were watching the tedious videos of artists making conceptual art. They were talking and giggling as they nailed the contents of their pockets to Yoko Ono’s Painting to Hammer a Nail. They were visibly scandalized by the violated canvases. They were having fun.
I became aware that most people might not have known this work ever existed, were it not for this show. Which could, if one looks at the works themselves, not be such a travesty. They are not great works of art. I, for one, really don’t think they were intended to be. (Or, at least most of them.) This work is about the process, not the product; and it is a process that – as the exhibition instructs – needed to happen. Painting needed to be literally assaulted, knocked off its pedestal and thoughtfully examined, in order to take its rightful place as one art-making medium among many.
The language used to tell this story of Painting’s demise and [pending] resurrection enacts a drama of Catholic proportions. One blurb of wall text reads, “The exhibition ends in the late 1970′s, when many of the perceived demons that dogged painting had been exorcized. . . and a more recognizable type of painting began to flourish again.” And another, with the heading “Last Rites” reads: “Around [1978] more conventional approaches to painting began to recapture the imagination of the art world and one could sense yet another generational shift, the demons of painting having been exorcized and those lessons applied to new circumstances.”
Painting had to be sacrificed in order to live again. The “paintings” in this exhibition collectively serve as the Lamb, righteously slaughtered so that Painting’s sins could be forgiven.
So, what do we have after this metaphorical crucifixion? We have the assurance that we can go forward in peace, lest we never forget the suffering rendered on our behalf.
“The critical thinking of the Target Practice years lives on to this day, as no painter worth his or her salt takes anything for granted when picking up a brush, evidence of a healthy self-awareness that allows painting to thrive.”
{Image credits, from top to bottom: Yoko Ono, Painting to Hammer a Nail, SAM Installation, 2009; Yoko Ono, Painting to Hammer a Nail, SAM Installation, 2009; Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, 1958; Matthias Grunewald, The Crucifixion, 1515 (detail); artist unkown, Jesus Christ with Crown of Thorns, as seen on allposters.com (detail); Günther Uecker, Grosse Wolke, 1965 (detail); Susanna Bluhm, Target Practice (figure a, figure b), 2009.
Great point, and marvelous use of the Uecker!
Great write up about the show, went to see it during this past first thursday. I like your pre & post observations.