There was a time, when paintings were pretty and fresh things to create as Flash animations and Websites are today. There's still a way to paint amazing pictures though. Here are the rules of my " Dogma of Painting":

1. To paint a large canvas use large brushes. Buy many of them, because you need clean brushes to smooth the lines where the different colors meet. Only Oil paint on Canvas is allowed. Never mix the colors with anything else than linseed oil.

2. Use a projector to display the picture that you want to paint on your canvas. If you know how to draw, do not make paintings, do Flash Animations or Fashion instead.

3. Abstract paintings are prohibited unless you¨ll invent an "automatic system", like those invented or appropriated by Jackson Pollock and Lucio Fontana. Anybody can use their systems and successfully produce Fontana and Pollock pictures, that´s cool. Abstract Art is interesting only when it originates from a machine or from a person that emulates a machine.

4. Use the most expensive material so you will feel the urgency to make something valuable to get your expenses back.

5. Composition, colors and size of the painting, should be copied from paintings at the Museums.

6. Deal with your brushstrokes as if you are a hairdresser.

7. You should use assistants. They should have no experience or any interest in painting. Just hire the people whose features match the characters you Ask often your assistants what colour they think is the "wrong color" to use and command them to paint with it so you will feel the urgency of taking over and save your work from them.

8. Paint many pictures at the same time and let them dry before you apply a new layer of colour. You"ll notice often, that the colour your have prepared for a painting should be used to another painting instead. A picture may take many years until it will be completed and actually, it's not your job to finish it. If people insist buying it before its done, just sell it to them.

9. Most important instruction: try to discover and represent, something that has never been painted before. If you find such a subject, you"ll definitely produce a masterpiece whatever way you¨ll paint it.

10. Make copies of your most important paintings and permit to other to copy them. All important painters of the past were making copies and that's why their work has survived today.

Manetas Dogma of Painting", written by Miltos Manetas, in the occasion of the 50th Venice Biennial.

Commissioned by FrancescoBonami.com