Skip to content

DA8. The Death of Painting

Statement

In the 1960s and 1970s art critics believed that current trends in art foretold the “death of painting.” Do you think painting has actually “died” as an art form in contemporary art? If so, what has risen to replace painting? If not, how has painting been able to survive? As always, please refer to specific works of art in your post.

Answer

Painting -in recent centuries- refers to the work of an artist putting pigments (of different natures) on a surface, usually paper, canvas, or wood. This art form is one of the oldest forms, and its surface, pigments, and techniques have evolved over the centuries from carving on the walls of caves to applying artificial pigments on fine papers.

The advancements in technologies and the rise of diverse sets of art forms directly threatened the existence of painting as a form of art. The 1960s and 1970s were a period of significant change in the art landscape where new forms like performance art, conceptual art, minimalism, and other forms that relied on something other than the artist’s hands; these forms used machine-made objects in their art, where the artist function became more of arranging these objects.

One particular threat to painting was digital art, especially with the rise of computers that could generate images and animations effectively and with high precision. Then, the rise of social media made it easier to spread these digital works, where the audience is not just a small subset of the wealthy elite, but rather the entire world.

The Swing
The Swing (SmartHistory, 2023)

With paintings like Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s “The Swing” (1767) which took from weeks to months to complete, I have created a digital painting in a matter of seconds using the prompt: “unlucky man on a paddleboard facing a huge ocean monster while going through a dark storm. The monster has a very very long neck and almost dragon-shaped and huge teeth. The scene is in a huge ocean with great waves. There should be no mountains in the scene. let’s bring the monster closer to the viewer’s perspective and all its body except neck and head is underwater” (Generated by Microsoft Copilot, 2024).

Sea Monster
Unlucky man facing a sea monster in a storm (Generated by Microsoft Copilot, 2024)

I am in no way an artist, not even an amateur, and I don’t know even the basics of art; but I was able to generate a digital painting that may take weeks to complete by a professional artist in a matter of seconds. This is an example supporting the argument that painting as an art form is dying, if not already dead.

To conclude, I believe that manual painting as an art form is already dead; but an experienced artist may be able to generate an astonishing piece of art with the help of the technologies that are available right now.

References

‌ ‌