Don’t bother. 240 pages, without so much as a single reproduction, excepting the cover. In a book supposedly about painting, this is not a good look and it’s certainly not a good method. It’s an anthology of fifty short articles by mostly ‘name’ critics and artists on the value of painting but not a particularly focussed or useful one. It starts with The End of Painting by Douglas Crimp (1981) and wends its way along to Painting Beside Itself by David Joselit (2009), drifting into photography at one stage (Howard Halle on Gursky), video (Ulricke Groos on Paul McCarthy) a film script (Schnabel on Basquiat) and items from the catalogue of Jim’s Shaw’s collection of amateur paintings. So it doesn’t exactly have rigour going for it, either. Myers is essentially a dutiful but dull critic and the potted selection spells out his tastes and times, but hardly provides an adequate framework for the free-ranging discussion gathered, nor justifies a number of surprising omissions from artists discussed.
Just how, for example, the fact that painting ‘has always belonged to networks of distribution and exhibition’ bears upon the value of painting goes unexplained, either in Myers’ introduction or Joselit’s confused essay on context in the work of Martin Kippenberger and colleagues. Similarly, Halle’s claim that painting doesn’t need paint; goes unexamined, while cases for expanded materials for painting can blur the line between painting and sculpture or print, but if these are taken to be a crucial tendency, then there’s not much point writing a book about painting and little to be gained in noting them as exceptions. The fact is, Myers struggles to define painting, to supply anything like a coherent history for it and this proves a singular handicap in selecting texts on the subject.
Notable painters of the past ten years, such as Matthew Ritchie, Jules de Balincourt, Peter Doig, Frank Nitsche, Odili Donald Odita, Daniel Richter, Neo Rauch and Dana Schutz scarcely rate a mention. Older artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, Manuel Ocampo, Brice Marden, Therese Oulton and Fiona Rae are ignored. Although, to be fair, Myers offers a paragraph on his reaction to Neo Rauch’s first New York show in 2000, (Meyers 2011:18) hastily summoning German ascendance in the art world, in which Rauch’s significance lies with German reunification in 1989. But typically, he can say nothing about the New Leipzig School style or ‘painting’ – why it is so striking – how it differs from preceding trends, such as the work of Kippenberger and Oehlen and finally plumps for compromise or ‘coalition’ as a favoured strategy, for not much more than the oxymoron that tradition consists of a series of linked breaks. Phew!
His introductory essay starts from another old chestnut, “painting is dead”, announced by minor French painter Paul Delaroche, supposedly, upon learning of the daguerreotype in 1839. Of course, the cry was not taken up by artists or critics generally and photography’s acceptance as a print form takes some time, much less rivalry for painting. Actually, painting comfortably assimilates the influence of photography and persists; prints of all kinds enjoy fluctuating prestige, critically, commercially. But for Meyers it is enough that October stalwart, Douglas Crimp argued for new prominence for photography in the early 1980s, by dismissing painting. Crimp’s The End of Painting has to be the most over-rated and over-cited art criticism, ever. For a good stretch of it, he defends the French painter Daniel Buren against criticism by old-school Minimalist advocate, Barbara Rose, taking the ideological high ground against Rose’s supposedly bourgeois humanism and absolutism, all the time fantasizing about how radical the sixties were, man. But this is really just formalism arguing with content, the cultural relativist shadow-boxing with the classicist. Comrade Crimp is strong on politics, weak on art history. He can argue that artists defected in droves from painting to photography (Meyers 2011:27) but can’t explain why so many remain painting, why painting finds so many new avenues and acceptance, even as photography flourishes. Photography may have prospered in the late 70s, but it demonstrably was not at the expense of painting, to any significant extent. Death takes more than a death certificate.
The End of Painting was a rash and ill-conceived criticism and sets an unfortunate tone for Meyers’ book. Meyers wants to agree, ‘no one could argue that painting captures our attention as it has in the past...’ (Meyers 2011:12) but promptly hedges – ‘It is important to be clear that I am not totally convinced of this…’ (Meyers 2011:13) From which, one can only conclude Meyers is just such a ‘no one’. Nor is he prepared to do the spadework – historical or logical - to support either position. Instead, he settles for something like an historical survey of criticism concerned with painting, for the past thirty years. But as noted, the selections beg qualification, score high on political correctness, with generous nods to feminism, Asia and the third world but low on any sort of theoretical framework within which to relate his material. Myers is known mostly for his artist monographs (Doig, Dalwood, Heilmann, Lichtenstein, Rosen and Zucker) and criticism in Art Forum, Brooklyn Rail, Afterall and Parkette. So he’s in the loop, a bit of a trendy Wendy and diplomat. He also holds teaching positions in L.A. and Chicago, when not roving abroad, promoting the brand, so he’s always going to be ‘more kiss-ass than kick-ass,’ as Americans say. Oddly, the book is published by MIT press and Whitechapel Gallery. I can’t think why Whitechapel would want to get involved with this sort of dross, but perhaps it’s been earmarked as a required text for students or the basis for an exhibition. I hope not.