Excerpt from a press release I recently received:
I’m aware of the nature of painting in our time, then and now, and in the 1970s, no one painted sunsets–or sunrises. Avant-garde art was conceptual, minimalist, multimedia. I wanted to paint– already suspect–and I wanted to tackle a dangerous subject, something risky that would shock my contemporaries. What could be more radical than the sun? I wanted to pry it out of cliché, to be seen as it is.
Any idea who said that? No one paints the sun, much, now either. If he or she did, it certainly wouldn’t be viewed as radical.
But is it? When so many artists are making their name by “shock and awe,” can a landscape painter become “hot”?
There’ an interesting line in Holland Cotter’s review of the deKooning show at MoMA, published online today:
In 1953, when he exhibited his third “Woman” series, the paintings were so outrageous that the art world had to pay attention, and did.
But back to my question: I’d say the answer is no. The artist quoted above is Graham Nickson, and he said those words in a recent interview with Lilly Wei. His work is in an exhibition called Paths of the Sun that opened today at Knoedler. Look at his bio, and you will not find his work in many museums. Corporations are his mainstay, or possibly private collectors.
Leaving aside the merits of Nickson’s work, on which reasonable people can disagree, I think it’s admirable to take a subject and try to “pry it our of cliche.” I agree that, in today’s art world, it can be seen as radical.
More important, I agree with Nickson that there ought to be room for his kind of art, art that doesn’t try to offend, or shock, or make a political statement.
Here’s Donald Kuspit on Nickson’s 2009 exhibit, Italian Skies, at Jill Newhouse.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Knoedler Gallery