Could it be painting?
- Author(s)
- Klaus-Peter Speidel
- Abstract
Based on the claim that essentialist definitions of painting (with criteria like flatness) are bound to fail, I argue that painting is an open concept for which a symptom-based approach is more suitable (similar to Nelson Goodman's symptom-based approach to art). I define the symptoms of painting and then show that digital retouching corresponds to them. Here's how Carl Robinson, the editor, sums up my argument: " [...] Speidel replaces an approach to painting through definition by outlining what he sees as the “symptoms” of the medium. For him these “symptoms” include operations such as smudging, rubbing, covering, layering and so on as well as incorporating a sense of flatness, and degrees of transparency and opacity. Speidel argues that digital retouching is painting as it incorporates such operations and qualities as fundamental aspects of its nature. From this Speidel positions David Bornscheuer’s (b.1983) and Joshua Citarella’s (b.1987) digital retouching of fashion shoots as painting. He understands that in fashion photography digital retouching only truly performs its function when hidden. It discreetly adjusts the photograph (usually of a person), and becomes embedded within it, such as to make a believable reality out of another, manipulated, one. Exposing this retouching, and removing it from the milieu of the fashion-shoot by placing it within art world contexts, reconceptualises this activity (and by association the medium) as art. Bornscheuer’s and Citarella’s work highlights that the transposition between photograph and painting not only achieves a fluidity across mediums but also a cross-over between fashion and fine art.
- Organisation(s)
- Vienna Cognitive Science Hub, Department of Art History
- Pages
- 77-100
- Publication date
- 2018
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 604001 Applied arts, 603101 Aesthetics, 604020 Art theory, 604021 Media arts
- Keywords
- Portal url
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/could-it-be-painting(61177c1d-6d5b-48c5-990f-0c7988410b88).html