Suzanne Hudson: Introduction

"Painting Now"書封圖像

下文節錄自Suzanne Hudson所著的「導論」，該文收入在 Thames & Hudson於2015 年出版的painting now，平裝本第一版於 2018 年面市。以下是A.I.翻譯而成的中文版本：

現在繪畫（意指「在繪畫中」）。這兩個字斷言了二十一世紀繪畫的活力和現實意義。對於一些讀者來說，這項宣言聽起來是確鑿無誤的，也許顯然是這樣，因為我們這個時代以繪畫的名義所進行的深刻的工作。由於繪畫仍然有意義，我們可能會問如何、為何、以及根據什麼方式。這些問題的答案構成了本書的主題。

然而，需要立即承認的是，其他讀者很可能將標題「現在繪畫」視為一個問題：現在繪畫？長期以來，繪畫一直被視為最高、最有價值的視覺藝術形式，但在數位時代甚至更早的時代，繪畫就受到了挑戰。隨著十九世紀攝影的出現和二十世紀現成品（現成物品稱為藝術）的出現，人們重新審視了布面油畫的歷史首要地位。事實上，馬塞爾·杜尚對現成品的使用恰逢他果斷放棄所謂的「視網膜」藝術（他對繪畫的稱呼）。這些爭論在二十世紀六十年代在波普藝術和商業圖像在繪畫實踐中的應用的背景下獲得了勢頭，藝術家們策略性地擴大了圖像文化的廣泛使用。約翰·巴特沙里（John Baldessari，生於1931年，加利福尼亞州納欣諾城）對之前一直從事的繪畫實踐的拒絕是如此決定性，以至於他在一九七〇年將這些早期作品燒成灰燼：放棄繪畫成為觀念藝術的先決條件。

這種考慮在二十世紀八十年代到達了頂峰，某些藝術家、作家和策展人用殘局式的語言來描述後現代主義興起時現代主義繪畫的崩潰。雖然這些團體並沒有對繪畫這一整體提出主張，而只是對它在現代主義環境下的生產提出主張，但「繪畫之死」成為自由派關於商業化文化中藝術意義的辯論的捷徑。由於無法達到它曾經達到的質量或重量，繪畫被認為已經結束，除非作為一種商業的、以裝飾為導向的與市場同謀的小玩意，或者爭論是這樣的。其他批評者則更具體地譴責形象化的庸俗行為，以及抽象化太容易代表意義的空泛。

當然，對現代主義繪畫的大多數批評立場都是以歷史主義為基礎的——對歷史或地理背景對藝術發展的意義的相對主義理解——這證明了重新評估形式的及時性。有鑑於此，我們可能會將二十世紀八十年代的終結論點視為同一個故事的一部分，因為儘管非常執著於自己的時刻，但它也涉及重新評估使藝術實踐受到質疑的邏輯。鑑於二十世紀八十年代初期關於表現主義繪畫回歸的大量文章（如桑德羅·齊亞〔Sandro Chia，1946年生於意大利佛羅倫薩〕塗有顏料、充滿事實的畫布）採用了普遍主義觀點，這一點尤其重要。根據這個論點，一種跨歷史的人文主義將繪畫的整個創造力聯繫起來，從洞穴中的作品到白立方中展示的作品，因此任何對繪畫的避免都被視為微不足道的曇花一現。然而，二十世紀六十年代和七十年代實踐在媒體、表演、地點、哲學和事件方面的擴展——再加上基於照片的挪用、明確的政治工作和其他形式的廣泛接受——意味著繪畫是壞的（意識形態和手段的倒退）和觀念藝術的好（意識形態和手段的挑戰）成為新的正統。

……術語也是一個問題。我將個人稱為「藝術家」而不是「畫家」，這是基於工作室後實踐所帶來的巨大轉變以及其他因素而做出的決定。簡而言之，「藝術家」這個詞是通用的，而「畫家」這個詞是具體的，前者現在在學術和批評語境中已成為慣例，並且受到許多選擇從事繪畫工作但也可能擁抱其他媒體的人的青睞。例如，艾米·西爾曼（Amy Sillman，生於1955年，密西根州底特律）就是如此，她用iPhone和iPad進行繪畫、繪畫和製作動態圖像，或者更具挑釁性的是，弗朗西斯·艾利斯（Francis Alys，生於1959年，比利時安特衛普）與墨西哥廣告看板畫家（rotulistas）合作放大或以其他方式解釋他的畫作，他走過耶路撒冷一九四八年的隔離線，在身後留下一條綠色油漆的痕跡，並收集了數百張基督教聖人法比奧拉的肖像。

此外，「藝術家」一詞標誌著一種廣闊的空間，繪畫成為一種選擇。我引用的許多例子都不是繪畫，因為繪畫並不是在真空中發展起來的，而是對包括繪畫和其他藝術種類的延展領域的回應（更不用說完全在藝術及相關媒體之外的社會、政治和其他條件情況了）。因此，我不接受繪畫與其他形式的作品的分離，我將其納入其中是為了使繪畫的例子更有意義。我所說的「繪畫」是指以繪畫的材料、風格、慣例和歷史作為主要參考點來完成的作品，就像拉奇布·肖（Raqib Shaw，生於1974年，印度加爾各答）鑲滿珠寶的夢境和克里斯塔普斯（Kristaps）中那樣。繪畫的可變性與它所產生的傳統有關但又超越了其產生的傳統——無論最終的藝術作品是否由一塊覆蓋著顏料的矩形亞麻布組成，旨在平直地掛在牆上。

正如已經暗示的那樣，這並不是要否認這種媒介，而是矛盾的是，要捍衛它作為一種廣泛的實踐。我還想抵制現代主義關於媒介特殊性的觀念，即繪畫純粹是根據其物質限制來理解的（公平地說，即使是克萊門特·格林伯格和邁克爾·弗里德這兩位以其對媒介的狹隘觀點而聞名的重要形式主義批評家也意識到更廣泛定義的潛力）。同樣，我拒斥了否認媒介特殊性的後現代主義思想，支持一種實用的方法，即相對於媒介的歷史和傳統來測試或評估一幅畫。這意味著我不依賴公認的定義，而是建議每項工作都要求我們重新思考該定義的適用性和意義。因此，我更關注方法而不是圖像，儘管形式當然會重複出現。最後，我避免根據風格將藝術家聚合在一起，因為看起來相似的物體可能彼此沒有任何關係，就像看起來不同的圖像可能有很強的相關性一樣……

英文原文如下：

SUZANNE HUDSON: INTRODUCTION

Painting Now. These two words assert the vitality and relevance of painting in the twenty-first century. For some readers, this declaration will ring true, perhaps obviously so, given the incisive work being done in the name of painting in our own time. As painting remains meaningful, we might ask how, why, and according to what means. The answers to these inquiries constitute the subject of this book.

Yet it needs to be acknowledged straightaway that other readers might well take the title, Painting Now, to be a question: Painting, now? Long seen as the highest and most prized of the visual art forms, painting has been challenged in the digital age, and even before. The historical primacy of oil on canvas was reviewed with the advent of photography in the nineteenth century and the readymade-the found object nominated as art-in the twentieth. Indeed, Marcel Duchamp's use of the readymade coincided with a decisive abandonment of so-called "retinal" art, his name for painting. These debates gained momentum in the 1960s, in the context of pop art and the application of commercial imagery in the practice of painting, with artists strategically expanding the uses of image culture at large. So decisive was John Baldessari’s (b.1931, National City, CA) rejection of the painting practice that had previously occupied him that, in 1970, he razed these earlier works in a crematorium: abandonment of painting became a precondition for conceptual art.

Such considerations came to a head in the 1980s, when certain artists, writers, and curators employed the language of endgame to describe the collapse of modernist painting at the moment of postmodernism's emergence. While these groups did not make claims for the whole of painting, just its production under modernist circumstances, "the death of painting" became glib shorthand for liberal debates about the meaning of art in a commercialized culture. Unable to achieve the quality or weightiness that it once attained, painting was deemed to be over, except as a commercial, décor-oriented trifle complicit with the market, or so the argument went. Other critics more specifically castigated figuration for trading in kitsch, and abstraction for all too readily standing for emptiness of meaning.

Of course, most critical stances on modernist painting were underwritten by a historicism- a relativist understanding of the significance of historical or geographical context to the development of art-that justified the timeliness of a re-appraisal of form. In this light, we might regard the endgame argument of the 1980s as part of this same story, since-while being very much wedded to its own moment-it also involved re- evaluating the logic that had sustained the art practices being called into question. This was especially important given that so much writing about the return of Expressionist painting in the early 1980s (like Sandro Chia's [b.1946, Florence, Italy] paint-smeared, facture-laden canvases) adopted a universalist view. According to this argument, a trans-historical humanism connected the whole of creativity in paint, from works in caves to those displayed in the white cube, and any avoidance of paint was therefore seen as an insignificant blip. However, the expansion of practice in the 1960s and 70s across media, performances, places, philosophies, and events- in conjunction with the widespread acceptance of photo-based appropriation, explicitly political work, and other forms-meant that the view that painting was bad (retrograde in ideology and means) and conceptual art was good (challenging in ideology and means) became the new orthodoxy.

（...）At issue, too, is terminology. I address individuals as "artist" rather than "painter," a decision based on the enormous transformations wrought by post-studio practice, among other factors. In short, the term "artist" is generic while that of "painter" is specific, and the former is now customary in academic and critical contexts, as well as favored by many choosing to work in paint who might also embrace other media. This is true, for example, of Amy Sillman (b.1955, Detroit, MI), who draws, paints, and makes moving-image tableaux with her iPhone and iPad, or, more provocatively, of Francis Alys (b.1959, Antwerp, Belgium), who has collaborated with Mexican sign painters (rotulistas) to enlarge or otherwise interpret his paintings, walked through Jerusalem's 1948 partition lines leaving a trail of green paint behind him, and collected hundreds of copies of a portrait of the Christian Saint Fabiola.

Moreover, the description "artist" signals a capaciousness, within which painting becomes a choice. Many instances I cite are not paintings, since painting is not being developed in a vacuum but in response to an expanded field that includes both painting and other kinds of art (not to mention social, political, and other circumstances entirely outside of art and its media). I do not therefore accept the isolation of painting from other forms of work, which I include to make examples of painting more meaningful. By "painting" I mean to stipulate work that is done with the materials, styles, conventions, and histories of painting as the principal point of reference-as in Raqib Shaw's (b.1974, Calcutta, India) jewel-encrusted dreamscapes and Kristaps Ģelzis's (b.1962, Riga, Latvia) monumental paintings, each of which represents the variability of painting as connected to but exceeding the traditions from which it emerges-whether or not the final artwork consists of a rectangular piece of linen covered in pigment intended to be hung upright on a wall.

As already implied, this is not to deny the medium, but, paradoxically, to defend it as an expansive practice. I also mean to resist modernist notions of medium specificity, whereby painting was understood purely in terms of its material limits (to be fair, even Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried, two significant formalist critics known for their circumscribed view of the medium, were also aware of the potential for a broader definition). Similarly, I reject postmodernist ideas that deny medium specificity, in favor of a pragmatic approach in which a painting is tested or evaluated relative to the histories and traditions of the medium. This means that I do not rely on accepted definitions, but suggest that each work asks us to rethink the applicability and meaning of that definition. I thus focus more on method than on pictorial imagery, though forms do, of course, recur. And finally, I avoid clustering artists together on the basis of style, as objects that look alike might have nothing to do with one another, just as images that look different might be powerfully related…

*In “painting now” published by Thames & Hudson Ltd. in 2015. (First paperback version published in 2018.)