So what’s a painting about, any painting? Representational or abstract, it doesn’t matter. Here is a flat surface, probably rectangular but even that isn’t real important. On it is an arrangement of colors and the same questions apply -- does it have presence, does it command the space it occupies, and would a person continue to look at it even though they see it everyday?
Could be minimal, could be contemporary, might be a visual cliche -- Van Gogh painted pots of flowers. However the artist chooses to get it done, historical or religious references, found labels and ticket stubs, appropriated cartoon characters or any other sort of image, doesn’t matter. It either enters your head or it doesn’t. Not only is the subject secondary to the main point of painting, it won’t be made better because a famous person painted it. Siqueiros, the Mexican muralist, could paint a raised fist that would read dynamically from a block away, but it was his paint and not his reputation that made this happen.
Might seem strange to knock down all the fences and let all the art mingle, hip to square, museum old to contemporary, famous and unknown, but these distinctions have always been plastic and arbitrary, the province of art bureaucrats and professional experts in their castles made of matchsticks. Does the art convey a message, well, maybe it does but that’s a separate issue. Could be about religious faith, celebrating a sports hero, or selling soap, and being good art would aid those causes, but they aren’t the art.
Starting from the same blank surface that’s always been there art has it’s own agenda, and a successful work of art is self-contained, true to its own logic, and speaks to the viewer in some fundamental way beyond the subject. It’s up to the individual to find, in the avalanche of visual sludge drifting by, the art that doesn’t get old for them.
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