The trouble with painting

The exhibition, Painting at the Edge of the World held at Walker Art Centre 

in Minneapolis, 10 February – 6 May 2001.[1] The Associate curator of visual Arts, Douglas Fogle was the organiser and curator. Painting at the Edge of the World was conceived as a two-fold project, placing equal emphasis on the exhibited paintings and the catalogue of essays. Fogle was also responsible for editing the catalogue; it has the feel and weight of a small telephone directory.

Fogle predictably acknowledges the old troupes of paintings painful death[2] but it is Bois’ paraphrased[3] conclusion from Painting: The task of mourning, that Fogle takes up the positive affirmation that ’If some painting is still to come, if painters are still to come, they will not come from where you expect them to’.[4] In his own essay The Trouble with Painting, Fogle addresses, ‘the ontology of painting, the very nature of it’s being.’[5] He considers a philosophical repositioning of painting, and asks:

            Is painting a mode of thought? Is there a philosophy of painting that extends beyond the confines of the medium? Where does the edge of the canvas and the edge of the world begin?[6]

Painting at the Edge of the World is now a decade old so to renew the present debates in painting I have collated some relevant links.

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[1] The Bush Foundation, American Express Minnesota Philanthropic Program, Rosina Lee Yue and Bert A. Lies, Jr., and Jumex Foundation sponsored the exhibition.

[2] Ranging from Paul Delaroche’s perhaps apocryphal declaration upon seeing the first Daguerreotype more that 150 years ago that “from today painting is dead” to Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism, Ad Reinhardt’s “last paintings,” and the constant allusions to the ‘death of painting’ in the critical discourse of the 1980s. See Douglas Crimps essay The end of painting, 1981 and Thomas Lawson’s Last Exit: Painting, Artforum, October 2001.

[3] D, Fogle, ‘The Trouble with Painting’ 2001 in Painting at the Edge of the World, exhibition catalogue, Fogle, D (ed) , Walker, Art Centre, USA, 2001. P.24., Bois paraphrases the quotation from the Australian writer Robert Musil, [1936].

[4] Fogle, op.cit., p.24.

[5] ibid,.p15.

[6] ibid,.p.15.