(Post-)Conceptual Painting

Essay on the Occasion of the Group Show High On Hope at Cross Lane Projects

Cross Lane Projects invited our artistic director Julien Delagrange to write an essay on conceptual painting and post-conceptual figurative painting for the exhibition catalog of the group exhibition High On Hope. The show features a selection of works by Mark Fairnington, Gerard Hemsworth, Roy Holt, Rebecca Scott, Bob & Roberta Smith, Michael Stubbs, Jessica Voorsanger, Mark Wallinger, and Suzy Willy.

The exhibition runs from July 23 until September 24, 2022, at Cross Lane Projects in Kendal, the United Kingdom (see installation view above; High On Hope, Installation view at Cross Lane Projects, 2022. Image by Mark Woods).

Discover more here.

What is Conceptual Painting: A Painted Conceptual Artwork or a Conceptual Painting? 

With the arrival of Minimal Art and Conceptual Art in the 1950s and 1960s, an ongoing tendency towards abstraction and the liberation of academism and artistic dogmas reaches a culmination point. According to many art critics, the end of Modernism would also mean the end of painting.^[1] 

The concept or idea became superior to craftsmanship, beauty, or traditional artistic media, resulting in a Copernican Revolution of postmodern art movements—think of Installation Art, Land Art, Arte Povera, Fluxus, Feminist Art, Environmental Art, and more. A new type of artist was born who can be described as a (neo/post-)conceptual multidisciplinary artist working across various media, think of photography, video, installation, sculpture, performance, and also — but rarely — painting. 

Conceptual painting consists of the use of painting during the historical art movement of Conceptual Art. Here, painting is implemented into a conceptual artistic practice in which the idea of the artworks is superior to the actual execution of the artwork itself.

The art object is merely a vehicular medium to transfer the idea from the mind of the artist to the mind of the viewer. Think of the date paintings by On Kawara (1932-2014) titled Today, in which the Japanese artist depicted the date according to the conventions of the country in which they were created for almost five decades, exploring the concept of time and the documentation of time. 

Here, painting becomes a natural ally for Conceptual Art with text paintings. Written language is not only a key characteristic of Conceptual Art, but it is also its genesis. The term originated in the 1960s in the United States of America when Fluxus artist Henry Flynt wrote about a new art movement he referred to as ‘Concept Art’ in 1961.^[2] A movement in which art consisted of language, and the idea was superior to anything else. 

Influenced by the Structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) and Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), artists examined language as a structural element for meaning. This often-linguistic game of the signified and the signifier culminated in changing the semiotics of art radically and ingeniously. Doing so, the emergence of text-paintings was a natural conclusion. The artwork was the textual content and the idea, and painting was reduced to being merely a surface, as is the case with On Kawara’s iconic series. 

However, with the text-based paintings by Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) or Mel Bochner (b. 1940), the role of painting was not reduced to the necessity of having a surface. Painting becomes an object once more, with the medium’s characteristics being reborn.

For instance, with Mel Bochner, the expressive nature of the writing of the artist becomes very present, with color and composition being reinstated. Mel Bochner was a true pioneer of Conceptual Art, but with his painterly practice, the visual and affective impact contrasts strongly with the rather cool, analytic, and lifeless visual language of Word Art from the 1960s and 1970s.[3] He reembraces paintings’ so-called seductive qualities, enchanting the viewer with its sensuous brushstrokes and a powerful punch of color. 

Whereas Conceptual Art at first seemed to have kicked painting out of the front door as an obsolete art form—often criticized as the medium par excellence as decoration for the wealthy^[4]—Word Art and text-paintings made painting reenter the building using the backdoor. 

Conceptual Art and Figurative Painting: An Unlikely and Underrated Synergy 

From a dialectic perspective, one might argue Conceptual Art and figurative painting are diametrically opposed. The first is marked by the use of innovative media and pushing the boundaries of the definition of art, whereas the latter is defined by craftsmanship and rooted in tradition. Figurative painting has a somewhat obsolete ring to it. As if it is a reactionary and nostalgic act by the artist, destined to fail in a post-conceptual era.^[5] But, as with painting in general, why would it be impossible for a figurative painting to have a conceptual foundation? 

Abstract painting did not experience this struggle when Conceptual Art emerged in the 1960s. Abstract Expressionism was in its heyday — the gestural with Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) and fields of color with Mark Rothko (1903-1970) — followed by Post-Painterly Abstraction and Op Art. Abstraction was still seen as the pinnacle of innovative and high art. Visually influenced by Minimal Art, abstract painting was much more connected to Conceptual Art. Think of Daniel Buren’s (b. 1938) 8.7 cm wide vertical stripes in relation to Hard Edge and Op Art painters such as Bridget Riley (b. 1931).

But figurative painting did not have such a visual connection with the up-and-coming postmodern art movements. And if Conceptual and Minimal Art were the future, then figurative painting must have been of the past? Figurative painting survived through Pop Art — albeit strongly connected to what was seen as ‘lower’ art forms such as illustration or printmaking. In the 1960s, Photorealism emerged as a new movement for figurative painting. However, it was not at all a revival of the representational possibilities in painting; on the contrary. Photorealism proved there was no future for figurative painting if the objective was mimesis, courtesy of photography and film.^[6]

Conceptual Art redefined the semiotics and expectations of art, and this applied to painting as well. So, with post-conceptual painting, the next step was not a counter-reaction, but a new synthesis. And a series of artists succeeded in finding this new synthesis.