Overview

Painting has been with us for many thousands of years. The Lascaux Caves, in southern France – the most well-known example of cave paintings – contain thousands of examples of the human drive to communicate through imagery. Whether the attempt was made to record the activities and landscape around the painters or to convey a narrative is up for conjecture. But one irreducible fact remains: for at least 20,000 years, man has been painting for the purpose of communicating with other human beings.

Since the Lascaux paintings were made, the activity and images of painting have consistent to command a very high degree of interest in the society we have developed. By the 13th century, painters had developed very sophisticated media (such as egg tempera) and techniques (including the accurate depiction of folds in clothing). Most of the paintings of this era were devotional commissions made explicitly to be installed in churches or as icons that were also hung in churches, and in the homes of the wealthy. The patronage of the church enabled artists to continue to paint, and became the main route through which artists could on the one hand develop the discipline and on the other, sustain themselves and their families. While the patronage of the church continued in the 1400’s, it also broadened to include royal commissions and portraits of (for example) wealthy merchants and their families. The techniques of paintings of this era show a considerable development towards realistic depiction. 800 years later, we find that much of the structure of art remains intact. There is a very tight connection between wealth and art; artists’ (especially painters) imperatives usually focus upon attempting to push the discipline forward, and the provenance of an artwork dictates in value in both ideological and financial terms. Painting has survivied every ideological and media based revolution in artmaking, and continues to thrive today. Exhibitions of paintings are held in large museums continually because the museum-going public show a very high demand. Museums respond to popularity as much as municipalities; major cities recieve a significant portion of their tourism income through such exhibitions simply because such museums attract tourists both nationally and internationally.

What is painting for? What is painting within Art History? How has painting been described over the years? What are the connections between painting and other forms of image making? What happened to paint during the tech revolution? Why do people paint today? There are thousands of painters all busily working on making paintings of all types: representative, abstract, monumental and petit, with traditional and expanded materials and for a vast plethora of reasons. What is painting to you? Each person’s reading of any painting is quite subjective, but it can be so only up to a point – at which moment, the intention of the artist surfaces and directs the gaze of the viewer. Students in this course of study will pursue these and many other difficult questions that are aimed at raising your level of ability to critically & constructively talk about painting and its history. Students in this class will come to terms with their own will to paint, and will answer questions that they will set for themselves, related to imagery, representation and justification in the light of history and theory.