Painting? A State of Utter Idiocy

In Frank Reijnders, “Painting: A State of Utter Idiocy?” he quotes David Reed as stating “We see painting in a different way now because of film and video”( Reijnders 22). Is this statement true? Have we lost the ability to see the revolutionary aspects of painting due to our constant bombardment of “faster, more perfect, more direct [images]” (Reijnders 20)? Why? Do we lose the powerful effects that paintings had created in their time because we have so many newer images to reference? Also because of our references to new images are we that much more critical of paintings for not being “perfect”?

I believe that since we have been born into a world where art has been around for hundreds of years we are going to recognize certain images. These images are then used for comparison, so although we may not want to judge past painting or art, we do. We are biased and want to see perfection. As a society we are obsessed with perfection and painting is no different, we hold standards today that we not held before. Artists of the past could not have dreamed about the abilities we have today and so there works do not always measure up to the standards we carry. It is unfortunate that we cannot always look past this but often it is done subconsciously. By using our standards, we do lose the effect that these works once held; it is only through recognizing our bias that we can move forward and truly look at works and understand them. We have to not only look at the painting but also understand the history in which it was created.


Reed also states that “Since we see the light on or through machines, it seems beyond the human, even immortal” (Reijnders 23). This made me think of how the artist was once seen as the immortal in creating paints. Now with this new technology aiding the creation of art, it brings up the question of who is immortal. Is it still the artist (person) or the technology?

Since artists today use this technology, it makes it much more difficult to come up with a concrete answer. Although it takes the mind of the artist to start creating, the technology is actually producing what they hope to create and accomplish. I think it is very difficult to state anything is immortal, like Reed states, I would not call past artist or present technology immortal. If anything it brings up the question as to why we think and name artists and now technology as immortal.