Beyond the Weak Painting by Jian Tzu-Chieh

We are in an era that signified are gone away from signifiers. No matter how we categorize paintings we are in risk. That's why my heart throbbed a bit when I was told that fifteen artists are participating in a show titled Weak Painting. What makes painting weak? Is this a question in regard to art types? Or, is Weak Painting suggesting a particular style that inclines to the weak end of the spectrum of painting?

Before answering these questions we still need knowledge of formalism, the historical perspective of formalism will be able to help us approach our studied subjects. In my other essays, I analyzed how does the axis of formalism on one end and knowledge on the other connect itself to the academic tradition. Now my interest switches to the art outside academia, meaning art existing in the seams along this axis. I probe the process of painting being caught by art market as well as the more and more complete machination of various institutions. How art beyond academia is excluded from the scope of academic discourses? Outside the intellectual concern, what activities are left?

This article is not attempt to make a conclusion but simply to find clues for further research before the inauguration of this exhibition.


1: Physical Approach-- Neural System

We can easily find some popular theories in the purpose of relating Weak Painting to physical activities, for example, the operation of neural system beside brain. The cliche of traditional aesthetics, abstract or material, does not fill the seams of academic system, the axis of formalism-knowledge means nothing. Being a domain of art practice, the planes carrying out strokes of brushes accidentally interweave subjects and objects over the fantastic painting. As the paragraph follows:

Sensation. Sensational images are related to sensible forms, which is an immediate activity of the physical response of neural system. On the contrary, perception of abstract forms belongs to brain, it is an activity of the brain tissue near the skull.


2: Discourses of Inexplicable, Shadowed Places

In our era that art tends to fall out of its subjectivity, I'd like to identify the creators first. As a critic of contemporary art at age of thirties, I do believe that painting is a weak category in art. I once thought my own experience might be biased, but after I participated in many panels of different art schools, I found that conversations about paintings never lasted more than five minutes. It was not because of the paintings themselves (in fact, art with a common blind point in form provides perfect timing for interfering language), but because the painters I encountered in academic system tend to maintain silent. A huge gap exists between the flawless art forms they have created and the so called "critical discourses".

Perhaps it's because creating such art forms one relies on his/her sensibility, which is the activity most difficult to be explained by language. Thus these artists shy away from any performative actions in occasions acquiring oral expression. Nevertheless, by no means these artists would ever give up entering the "performative state that needs special motivation to turn around"(I define this domain with such an expedient terminology). In order to answer the question about the weakness of painting, we can't avoid looking into the personalities of this group of artists. Their weakness is most evident in speech which is not resulted from their inexperience in art but from the poverty of jargons to suitably interpret their art experience. In other words, painting lacks the apparatus to provoke theory development that can be interfaced by language only. If the necessary apparatus is a straight, perceivable line, painting only happens at the discontinuation of language where unspeakable sensibility fills in. The indescribable sensibility is shared among these artists, they inherited the tradition of silence in painting.

The discontinuation intrigues me most. Silence doesn't mean emptiness and the Weak Painting happens to refract the shadowed place in contemporary art that even the most critical theories fail to elucidate. How do we respond to the contemporary art that actually is so intimate to our everyday life? As conventional painting and sculpture are accepted by the public as what art is supposed to be, multimedia and installations are accidentally involved in real social domains. In the documentary exhibitions of contemporary art, we witness the contextual reference not unlike the presentation in museums or the orderly displays in shopping malls. What distinguishes art from commonplace is a weak, subtle experience of formalism. We must have the faculty to discern ready-made objects from the context of everyday life, or to decode the semiotic system as well as meanings beyond the system (in the case an anonymous subject manipulates it). Or, we should be able to recognize that the similarities are in fact simulacres deviated from our reality (real social domains don't represent reality). Contemporary art is an activity of intervention, artists are disturbing the existing social spheres and before they take actions, they must learn how to differentiate the obscure distinctness of art from the display of commodities. Thus Weaking Painting, providing the most precise understanding of formalism, has successfully taken over the position around the vague boundary between art and daily life.


3: Blessing from Tradition

Though passively passing on the tradition of silence in art, painting is benefited by the linear tradition. The weakness we talk about here implies the power of interpretation within the institution. Paintings are weak because they hardly provoke discussions and are too well accepted as a symbol of capitalism with their incredible market value. They are the most favored goods for high-end consumers, and they constitute the most convincing footnote for art production within the system.

I have no intention to belittle art trade but can't help wondering what this footnote would bring us. We must be careful for it might be a conspiracy. While everyone is knowingly benefited by tradtion without thinking more skeptically, we question that since contemporary art is in fact operated into the market, are we still able to distinguish painting from other types of art?

Anyway, the judgment that paintings are more acceptable by the institutional power is also a very seductive paradigm of criticism. In addition to its tradable nature, paintings carry out the precisely calculated or deliberately blurred sensibility with a traditional approach that allures everyone. This judgment even suggests that there are people familiar with the operation of the institution but unable to talk about their subjects. We also should not omit that, under this paradigm of criticism, Weak Painting is actually side-by-side with the institutional power of interpretation. It replaces the particular absence of narrative structure by visibility. The absence presents itself as a smooth linear course of many traditions so it pushes paintings into systematic transactions. No matter it is deemed as artwork or commodity, this straight course is no longer parallel to the overly simplified, unequivocal art history. The signifiers used be for the employment of artists are long gone.


4: Divergence

In the news release, co-curator Chang Ching-Wen writes: "Weak Painting suggests the attitude of these young artists. The weakness comes from the flimsy senses and perception in daily life, it is not as grand as meta-narratives, but it provides captivating points of view." In the inner of these young artists are winding psychological paths, they hang about over the two-dimensional paintings and maintain the conventional relationship between hand manipulation and original art by representing private stories. They are enveloped by silence perhaps because of the crisis of meta-narratives. The signifying machination of Weak Painting has diverted from the domination of art history. Things might influence these weak paintings are more likely to be choruses repeatedly played, trivial ideas from commonplace, and emotions, desires or spontaneous convulsions caused by neural system that have been long repressed by the doctrines of the shackles of formalism-knowledge-academia. Through these young artists, Weak Painting develops new subjective context and their particularly private activities for painting break away from the zero distance between "us" the the meta-narratives enveloping the entire Taiwanese society.


5: Beyond

I imagine myself taking the standing of Weak Painting, then I am obliged to criticize the paradigm of criticism. Thus my task gets more and more complicated. For example, how can I clarify the difference between "private activities for painting" and the "self objectification in seductive games"? Breaking away from the zero distance to meta-narratives is similar to sheltering oneself in a cafe at the busiest hours, with the excuse of meditating and in fact escaping. One strategy in my mind is to establish the relationship between Weak Painting and the "strong" art categories. Undoubtedly we will have to proceed this job by making use the high penetrative ability of painting in the reality and kick off an exploration through this unusual exhibition compared to many art events in recent years. Though formalism still is an issue, Weak Painting can only play the critical turning point when painting is no longer trapped by certain forms and the weakness referes not only painting or any other popular art types. Perhaps these young artists already have achieved it.