TRUTH IN PAINTING

Painting is no longer about representation, it is about inspiration. However, painting today is too focused on the creation of the "new" rather than the creation of the "true". The 20th century was infatuated with new painting styles and materials, which has led to a focus on the mode and medium of expression rather than the message being expressed. After one-and-a-half centuries of innovation, with so many art taboos shattered, with so much of the field colonized and long-inhabited, the search for the new is becoming increasingly shallow and repetitive. Creating the new, purely for newness' sake, can bring academic significance but offers little long-term weight. Truth and beauty, on the other hand, have longevity -- they affect the viewer and the resonance of that experience lingers for a long time. All three need to be combined to create art that has impact as well as freshness.

What is truth? Like everything in art, the concept of truth is completely subjective. People define their own truth. A person might wax eloquent on the truth embedded in Mondrian's simplicity. I, on the other hand, only see sterile intellectual concepts placed on canvas. We both believe that we are right.

I view truth not simply as honesty, but as emotion or expression that has a deeper, more powerful effect on the viewer. Satire and deconstruction are objects of fashion; this kind of art is easily forgotten. Comments on the human condition have the strongest impact. The viewer can relate to the canvas, both today and -- since the human condition stays consistent through the centuries regardless of how our environment changes -- in the future. Truth about humanity does not need to focus solely on subject matter. Cezanne's and Basquiat's truth can be found in their paint handling. Their uncompromising passion leaps out of the canvas. Cezanne is more popular because he balanced the trinity of truth, beauty and innovation.

This year's Whitney Biennial, a survey of American art from the past two years, is largely flat. Coverage is limited, naturally, to those artists who have fallen within the limited spotlight of curators and dealers. Much of the work is attractive, but few pieces have an impact. Shirin Neshat's short film is an exception, because it combines beauty with a powerful statement on the human condition. Others, like Vic Munoz's copy of The Raft of the Medusa in syrup, have wonderful wit but do not stay with you long. Munoz's images are striking because craft and technique seem so rare in today's art world, but craft alone does not give a piece of art truth. So many works I see today are trying hard to be innovative. They are desperately fresh, and inescapably derivative. They are "neat" and "funky" rather than emotional and hard-hitting.

Why not live in the moment with disposable art to match our plastic wares and TV game shows? Certainly many artists in the latter 20th century pursued that theme. Sarcasm and kitsch are easier than emotional honesty. More difficult is the struggle to create something greater than ourselves, something that can outlast ourselves. Most human beings don't want to be unexceptional. We want to be special, to have some nugget of brilliance in our own way. It might be fixing cars. It might be working a sable brush at 3am as lack of sleep wears on your eyes but the imperative of being better, making better, expressing better drives you on. And just as we hope for brilliance in ourselves, we like to touch it as well, whether in a conversation, reading a novel or staring at a canvas.

There are still more Cezannes, more Dostoevskys, to come. We will spot them more by their truth and their beauty than their hipness.

Giff Constable
May 20, 2000

[post-note: Much later I came across an interesting entry in Paul Klee's diary. See '1901, Entry 142' on the Paul Klee page.]

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