Digital Embodiment in Contemporary Abstract Painting - CORE

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GOLDSMITHS Research Online
Thesis (PhD)
Stubbs, Michael
Digital Embodiment in Contemporary Abstract Painting
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Digital Embodiment in Contemporary Abstract Painting

Michael Stubbs
Goldsmiths College, University of London, PhD, 2003
Thesis Abstract

This thesis re-investigates Clement Greenberg’s discredited abstract expressionist claim that
painting should seek its own purity through the acknowledgment of its material. I argue that
Greenberg’s physical, bodily determination of painting (but not its purity) is re-located as a
criticality in contemporary practice because of the changes brought about by the simulacrum
and the digital. By utilizing the particularities of ‘painterly’ issues such as materiality, depth and
opticality into the virtual, this claim responds to Arthur C. Danto’s ‘end of history’ theories where
he argues that artists are no longer bound to the dictates of grand master narratives of art. For
Danto, contemporary art has irrevocably deviated from the narrative discourses which define it
such as Greenberg’s.

Not satisfied with either postmodern strategies of parody in painting that claim a linear end to
the modernist canon, or with recent claims that contemporary painting is beyond
postmodernism, I convert Greenberg’s physical determinism using Andrew Benjamin’s notion
that contemporary abstract painters, through making, accept and transform the
historical/modernist premise of the yet-to-be-resolved object/painting by staging a repetition of
abstraction as an event of becoming.

This ‘re-styling’ of abstract painting is then examined as an ontological conjoining of Greenberg
with Merleau-Ponty’s claim that the painter transforms the relationship between the body and a
painting by overlapping the interior sense of self with the world of external objects. I argue that
contemporary painting can offer a philosophical dialogue between the painter’s subjectivity as a
mirroring of the painter’s personal style through objective ornamental materiality. This dialogue
is developed through Stephen Perrella’s Hypersurface theory which proposes a non-subjective,
deterritorialised, architectural parallel of the digital as a transparent, fluid system of multi-
dimensional signs in which the contemporary subject traverses. Consequently, I suggest, the
symbolic virtual changes the body’s sensuous relation to time and space and is central to
contemporary painting’s criticality.

2
Contents

6 List of Illustrations

9 Illustrations

44 Foreword The ‘End’ of Irony

48 Introduction ‘Uncritical’ Strategies in Painting

Media Representations of Painting
Contemporary Painting as Entertainment
New Formalism
Post History?

62 Chapter One Painting after Parody: What does it mean to Paint Today?

Painting Beyond Postmodernism? ‘Abstract Painting, Once Removed’
Colour Me Blind
New Abstract Painting
Re-Writing History
The Informe
The Informe as Decorative Surface, or how to re-deal Abstract Painting
Walter Benjamin and Mechanical Reproduction

91 Chapter Two Modernism, Postmodernism and Arthur C.Danto’s, ‘After the End of Art’

Clement Greenberg and Modernism
Clement Greenberg: Flatness in Painting;
(i) Avant-Garde and Kitsch, (ii) Towards a Newer Laocoon, (iii) On the Role of Nature in
Modernist Painting, (iv) Abstract and Representational, (v) Modernist Painting
3
Pop Art
Postmodernism: Resistance or Neo-Conservatism
Arthur C.Danto: ‘After the End of Art’
Yve-Alain Bois: Painting as Model
David Pagel: Abstract Painting… Once Removed;
(i) Beyond Postmodernism?(reprise), (ii)High Modernism, Pop and the Stylistic ‘Effect’ of
Contemporary Painting, (iii) Mechanical Reproduction and the Embodied Effects of Aesthetics as
an Apposition

130 Chapter Three The Relation of Embodiment to Phenomenology in Painting as a Re-
Staging of Abstract Painting: Andrew Benjamin’s ‘What is Abstraction?’ and Merleau-
Ponty’s ‘Eye and Mind’

Andrew Benjamin: What is Abstraction?
(i) Irreducible Determinations: Painting, Materiality and History as a Twofold Procedure, (ii)
Painting as an Act of Process: The ‘Yet-to-be-Resolved’ Object, (iii) Historical Repetition and
Interpretive Time, (iv) The Re-Configuration of Paintings Surface in the Contemporary
Merleau-Ponty: Eye and Mind;
(i) A Critique of Scientific Operationalism, (ii) The Overlapping of the Thinking and Seeing Body
with the World of Objects, (iii) The Bodily-Imaginative Production as a Mirror of the World of
Objects, (iv) Depth, Space and Colour as Reversibility, (v) Painting Practice as Auto-Figurative
Colour, Depth, Style and Flesh as ‘Overlapping’: Secondary Readings of Eye and Mind
Galen A. Johnson: Ontology and Painting
Cezanne: Watercolours
Alphonse de Waelhens: Merleau-Ponty: Philosopher of Painting
David Reed: The Surface as Illusion and Paint as Object; Painting as Sign
The Sign as Code
Jean Baudrillard: The Model as a Reversal of the Logic of Meaning; From Subject to Object
Painting: Re-Determining Merleau-Ponty’s ‘Fleshy Overlapping’ in Vision with Jean Baudrillard’s
‘Appearance as Sign’; From Object to Subject and Back Again

170 Chapter Four The Ontology of Digital Embodiment as Hypersurface

Modernity, Self, Embodiment, Technology and Motion
Technology and the (Dis)appearing Subject: Schizophrenia or Seduction?
The Computer Screen as Augmented Space
Hypersurface Theory; Architecture><Culture
Electronic Signs as Planes of Ornamental Immanence
The Imaginary Texture of the Real as a Deluezean ‘Becoming’
Decoration as Critique
4
197 Conclusion The Ontology of Digital Embodiment as a ‘Becoming’ in Contemporary
Abstract Painting

Surface Flatness as a Site for Re-Configured Activity
Style as Hypersurface in Contemporary Painting
The Criticality of Apposition as ‘Pure Seduction’

208 Bibliography

Additional Booklet;
212 Michael Stubbs, Paintings: 1989-2003 Visual Accompaniment to Thesis

213 Contents

214 Introduction

216 List of Illustrations

219 Illustrations

5
List of Illustrations
(measurements in centimeters and inches)

9 Michael Stubbs, Untitled, 1991, oil paint on stacked canvases, 31x31x22cms.
Kremer, M. (1990). MA Show: Goldsmiths. London; Goldsmiths College

10 Elizabeth Peyton, Jarvis on Bed, 1998, oil on board, 43x46cms.
Zdenek, F. (2002). Editor. Elizabeth Peyton. Ostifildern-Ruit: Hatje Cante Verlag

11 Dexter Dalwood, Paisley Park, 1998, oil on canvas, 153x183cms.
Ellis, P. (1999). Die Young Stay Pretty. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts

12 Jason Martin, Merlin, 1996, oil on aluminum, 244x244cms.
Rosenthal, N. and B. Adams, L. Jardine, M. Maloney, R. Shone (1997). Sensation.
London: Saatchi Gallery. p.123.

13 Ingrid Calame, EUnstz, enamel on aluminum, 1998, 24”x24”; OM splink, 1997, enamel
on aluminum, 24”x24”.
Relyea, L. (1998). ‘Virtually Formal’. Artforum no.1, vol.XXXVII (September). p.131.

14 Monique Prieto, GOP, 1997, acrylic on canvas, 84”x66”; No Exceptions, 1996, acrylic
on canvas, 30”x48”.
Relyea, L. (1998). ‘Virtually Formal’. Artforum no.1, vol.XXXVI (September). p.132.

15 Bank, Cocaine Orgasm, 1995, mixed media, dimensions variable.
Anon. (2000). Bank. London: Bank Publications. p.29.

16 Laura Owens, Untitled, 2002, oil and acrylic on linen, 214x133cms.
Schwabsky, B. (2002). Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting. London and New
York: Phaidon. p.242.

17 Gary Webb, Cock and Bull, 2001, mixed media, dimensions variable.
Charlesworth, J.J. (2002). ‘Not Neo but New’. Art Monthly no.259 (September). p.8

17 Shahin Afrassiabi, Display with Table, 2002, mixed media, dimensions variable.
Charlesworth, J.J. (2002). ‘Not Neo but New’. Art Monthly no.259 (September). p.9

18 Kevin Appel, A Living Room with Oranges, 1996, oil and acrylic on canvas over board,
65”x52”; Landing, 1998, oil and acrylic on canvas over board, 72”x64”.
Relyea, L. (1998). ‘Virtually Formal’. Artforum no.1, vol.XXXVI (September). p.128.

19 Takahashi Murakami, The Castle of Tin Tin, 1998, acrylic on canvas, 298x298cms.
Christofori, R. and L. Relyea (1999). Colour Me Blind. Stuttgart and Munster:
Wurtembergischer Kunstverein; Stadtische Austellungshalle am Hawerkamp, 1999.
p.81.

20 Fiona Rae, Evil Dead II, 1998, oil and acrylic on canvas, 244x214cms.
Christofori, R. and L. Relyea (1999). Colour Me Blind. Stuttgart and Munster:
Wurtembergischer Kunstverein; Stadtische Austellungshalle am Hawerkamp, 1999.
p.97.

21 Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950, oil and enamel on canvas,
8’11”x17’8”.
Clark, T.J. (1999). Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press. p.343.

6
22 Glenn Brown, Kill the Poor, 2000, oil on panel, 71x57cms.
Paul, Frederic and S. Hepworth, T. R. Myers (2000). Glenn Brown. Bignan: Domaine
de Kerguehennec, Centre d’art contemporain, 2000. p.53.

23 Carroll Dunham, Island, 1997, mixed media on linen, 68”x88”x1”.
Cameron, D. (1998). ‘Carroll Dunham at Metro Pictures’. Artforum no.7, vol.XXXVI
(March). p.95

24 Philip Taaffe, Old Cairo, 1989, monoprint and acrylic on linen, 231x172cms.
Pellizzi, F. (1990). ‘Fragment on Ornament: Gunther Forg and Philip Taaffe’. Parkett
no.25. p.83.

25 Kevin Knox, Untitled, 2000, oil on cancvas 244x198cms.
London: Approach Gallery. [press release].

26 Richard Prince, Untitled, 1995, silk-screen and acrylic on canvas, 118x122cms.
Dietch, J. (1996). Young Americans. London: Saatchi Gallery. p.84.

27 Andy Warhol, Flowers, 1966, silk-screen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas,
294x294cms.
McShine, K. and B. H. D. Buchloh, M. Livingstone, R.Rosenblum (1989). Andy
Warhol: A Retrospective. New York: Museum of Modern Art. p.296.

28 David Salle, His Brain, 1984, diptych: oil and acrylic on canvas, 117”x168”.
Kardon, J. and L. Philips (1986). David Salle. Pennsylvannia: Institute of
Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. p.56.

29 Jasper Johns, Flag, 1955, oil and collage on canvas, 107x154cms.
Boudaille, G. (1991). Jasper Johns. London: Academy Editions. p.38.

30 Fabian Marcaccio, Paint-Zone #11, 1994-5, oil and collograph on canvas,
163x153cms.
Benjamin, A. (1996). What is Abstraction? London: Academy Editions. p.56.

31 Jonathan Lasker, Expressions of an Uncertain Universe, 1994, oil on linen,
76x102cms.
Benjamin, A. (1996). What is Abstraction? London: Academy Editions. p.2.

32 Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, c.1900, watercolour, 31x48cms.
Venturi, L. (1978). Cezanne. Basingstoke and London: MacMillan London Ltd. p.156.

33 Henri Mattisse, Nude, Back View, 1906, lithograph, 45x28cms.
Bois, Y-A. (1993). Painting as Model. Cambridge Mass. and London: MIT Press. p.43.

34 David Reed, #358, 1996, oil and alkyd on solid ground, 30”x38”.
Danto, A.C. (1999). ‘Bedside Manner; David Reed’. Artforum no.10, vol.XXX
(Summer). p.124.

35 David Reed, David Reed in his Studio with works in progress, 1999.
Danto, A.C. (1999). ‘Bedside Manner; David Reed’. Artforum no.10, vol.XXX
(Summer).p.123.

36 Marcus Novak, Paracube, 1997, mixed media, dimensions variable.
Perrella, S. (1998). ‘Hypersurface Architecture I’. Architectural Design no.5-6, vol.68.
p.91.

37 Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins, Interaction House, 1997, mixed media,
dimensions variable.
Perrella, S. (1998). ‘Hypersurface Architecture I’. Architectural Design no.5-6, vol.68.
p.25.
7
38 Daniel Buren, Les Colours Melangees: le Village, 2001, mixed media, dimensions
variable.
Pellegrin, J. (2002). ‘Daniel Buren: Decoration as Critique’. Art Press no.280 (June).
p.22.

38 Liam Gillick, Revision/22nd Floor Wall Drawing, 1998, mixed media, dimensions
variable.
Pellegrin, J. (2002). ‘Daniel Buren: Decoration as Critique’. Art Press no.280 (June).
p.23.

38 Tobias Rehberger, Edith’s Sunny 11.10.63 (Piaf), 2000, mixed media, dimensions
variable.
Pellegrin, J. (2002). ‘Daniel Buren: Decoration as Critique’. Art Press no.280 (June).
p.23.

39 Jeremy Blake, Installation of ‘Mod Lang’, 2001, DVD projections of digital animations,
dimensions variable.
Valdez, S. (2002). ‘Attack of the Abstract: the Digital Art of Jeremy Blake’. Art in
America (March). pp.102-103.

40 Chris Ofili, Afrodizzia (second version), 1996, mixed media on canvas, 244x 183cms.
Schwabsky, B. (2002). Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting. London and New
York: Phaidon. p.239.

41 Albert Oelhen, Untitled, 1994, oil on canvas, 240x200cms.
Hergott, F. and R. Ohrt (1995). Albert Oehlen. Cologne: Taschen. p.163.

42 Michael Stubbs, Untitled (beef joint no.4), 2001, oil based mixed media on MDF,
122x122cms.
Hemsworth G. and S. Malik (2000). Painting as a Foreign Language. Sao Paulo:
Edifico Cultura Inglesa, Centro Brasileiro Britanico. p.55.

43 Michael Stubbs, Untitled (ice cream no.3), 2002, oil based mixed media on MDF,
153x122cms.
Stuttgart: Hollenbach Gallery. [post card].

8
Michael Stubbs, Untitled, 1991, oil paint on stacked canvases, 31x31x22cms
9