Dana Schutz, Frank on the Beach (2002) 1.22x 1.52m

What does "The Triumph of Painting" tell us about ourselves and about the world we have created?

Though a lot of the work-if not most of it-is figurative, the human being, usually the central figure of representational art, or the interconnectedness of human beings is not an essential element of the show. In fact, and to a great extent, a lot of the artists seem more at ease avoiding the theme altogether. Don't expect women bending serenely over their embroidery by the lamp à la Vuillard or happy villagers dancing merrily Brueghel-style before feasting on wine and bread. This is neither about peacefulness nor is it about jollity. Insofar as humans are depicted they are either extremely solitary, inflicting pain on each other or perfectly disjointed when in a group, and inevitably they are perfectly ugly. Though it could be said that this is what the artists choose to represent-and why not?-the systematic choice to represent the human as physically ugly is nonetheless intriguing.

In his excellent book L'Art a l'Etat Gazeux, subtitled (my translation) "Essay on the Triumph of Aesthetics," the French art critic/philosopher Yves Michaud reflects upon the following paradox: We presently live in a world where the beautiful is meant to be the norm and a selling argument. A lot of attention is paid to the body, food is always beautifully presented on plates in trendy restaurants, a lot of what we purchase and covet has a designer label from cookware to kitchen appliances, clothes, phones, MP3 players, and so on. The list is long-and yet, paradoxically, beauty as such is no longer a tenet of art.

Albert Oehlen, Titanium Cat with Laboratory Tested Animal (1999) 2.09x 3m

By "beauty" Michaud does not mean "pretty" beauty. He refers to beauty in its wide acceptation, in all its dissonance, its obscure twists, its goyaesque accents. "The Triumph of Painting" is of course a perfect illustration of Michaud's point, but the exhibition takes it one step further: The human being is ugly and so is the human condition. It is, to say the least, a most unfortunate step. We are of course left wondering why well-fed-and extremely well-paid-artists of the First World choose to portray such misery. They are not, after all, caught under the bombs of Fallujah or in the famine in Darfur, the rising waters of Biloxi or the earthquakes in Pakistan.

The commercial success most of these artists pursue so doggedly is not indicative of a superior social conscience, either. It could just be that this brave new world we are living in is not a happy place, and many would agree. But it could also be something else, too: that statements-some art critics would call it ideology-have replaced inspiration and talent-in short, art. The new formula seems to be: Ugliness becomes a statement and the statement becomes the art. The whole problem, of course, is that whatever art is, it is not a statement. It may make a statement, but by its very nature art does not affirm; it gives the viewer the elements from which to thread a story, develop a feeling or form an impression. In art the means are as essential-if not more so, as clearly seen in the case of abstract painting-as the message or the subject. It is not the message that makes a work art, it is the feeling of the viewers. Duchamp, the acknowledged father of conceptual art, said so himself: "Ce sont les regardeurs qui font les tableaux" (it is the viewers who make the paintings). It is therefore ironic that today's art pursues so relentlessly the message or the subject and so little the craft. If art conveys a message it is because of its transformational power rather than because of its subject. "Conceptual art" could thus well be a contradiction in terms. 

The subject as art is nowhere better seen than in the glorification of the trivial. The founding father of this scam is by his own admission Andy Warhol, but that his tenuous proposition continues to find disciples 30 years later is simply astounding. What exactly were the curators thinking when they hung Wilhelm Sasnal's 1.8- by 1.8-meter (71- by 71-inch) canvas of a car exhaust? Or Jonathan Wohnseifer's work that reads "Braun Sugar"? Or Ian Monroe's loudspeakers? Or Lucy McKenzie's "Depeche Mode Night"? Is the irony lost on me? Most definitely.

Wilhelm Sasnal, Car (2002) 1.8x 1.8m

Johannes Wonseifer, Braun Sugar (2004) 1.4x 1m

The impression is, of course, that artists are gasping for inspiration the way a drowning man gasps for air. What lies behind this utter lack of inspiration? Or, as Jean Paul Sartre used to tartly joke, "What happens to the existence when it runs out of essence?" (In French, "essence" means the same as in English but also means gasoline.)

Let's take a look at Dana Schutz's "Frank on the Beach" or "Leading Lady." It is our turn to gasp for air while watching the breathtaking lack of basic painterly skills. And Shutz has a lot of company! Very bizarrely indeed-in this time of miniaturization, microsurgery, bioengineering, genetically modified everything, stealth bombers and cutting-edge technology in every possible field-when it comes to art we are told that rudimentary skills are passé. Only an arch-conservative, better yet a pithecanthropus, not yet erectus, a reactionary proto-australopitecus, can worry about skill and talent in art and is enchanted by superior draftsmanship, idiosyncratic visions, new visual takes on reality. The fact that everywhere else in society everybody searches all the time for skill, talent and originality cuts no ice with the name-callers. Vituperations, alas, don't make the art any better, nor do they supply Frank on his beach with the proverbial fig leaf that is supposed to hide what we-girls at least-want to see 
and that we all see much too plainly. The raw absence of talent here is displayed with-excuse the pun, it's irresistible-a cockiness, a self-confidence that borders on the comical. But it also begs the question: How can anyone with little or no talent, and even fewer skills, find inspiration? The search for inspiration must be prompted by something. 

The other cause for the lack of inspiration is well discussed by Donald Kuspit in his book The End of Art (Cambridge University Press, first published in 2004 and reprinted in 2005) in the chapter "The Decline of the Cult of Unconscious: Running on Empty." If human emotions/imagination, in short the artist's psychological makeup, or the collective unconscious are no longer the well from which talent draws its nourishment, then what is? The answer is ... you guessed it: Campbell's soup!

So, is "The Triumph of Painting" performing for painting (and for us who thought painting was dead, if some of us indeed thought that) the service it purports to render, as its cheerfully pompous title implies? 

If the promoters of the show really thought that painting needed rehabilitation on the grounds that the so-called pundits of the art world have been distracted for too long by high- or low-tech installations and other derivative entertainments, what Kuspit in The End of Art calls "post post art," it seems in the light of this show that their quest for new arts is totally understandable. 

In an interesting twist, it is always we the viewers-our feelings, our aspirations, our world-that get depicted in art. We like it when it speaks to our inner reality; we don't when it doesn't. In this respect "The Triumph of Painting" is a strangely alien show. It shows us a rootless planet, hanging in the void where industrial goods are the new idols, and we humans are ugly, servile and evil acolytes. And we may be so ... but art-true art-is always predicated on at least the certainty of its raison d'être. In this case, the firmness of conviction is missing. "The Triumph of Painting" is nothing but a lame attempt at giving painting the place it so richly deserves.

The show can be seen at www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk or in the catalog "The Triumph of Painting" published by Jonathan Cape, London.


Gail Lusby was a dealer of modern art in Paris and New York City until she came back to SMA in January 2002, upon inheriting her parents's house in town. Since then she has been a collector of emerging Latin American artists, as well as the curator of several South American collections. She is the daughter of the late Chantal and Dick Lusby, who were both well-respected artists and beloved residents of San Miguel as early as 1973.