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How to paint is one of the main (and hidden)
questions by an artist of my generation.
If
your point is to express yourself , no problem:
Technique is just what you are able to do, no
matter how you do it; it is always OK.
But
if your ambition snobs expression and sometimes
ignores also identity, there is only one way
to discover how to paint: Look at somebody who
paints and imitate him. Now, this was not easy
during the last decades: Nobody, could teach
you something. Not even Gerhard Richter, as
his point is more on photography than on painting.
The
fact is that painting is important. It is never
in motion. A photograph always is. There is
a time factor that can make it move, if not
the photo itself, the eyes of the observer in
front of it . But painting, and even more so,
oil on canvas is the Perfect Flat Dead Thing.
Representation had no authority against reality
until oil painting was invented.
Oil
painting , had been invented after Giotto ,
Macintosh computers after Walhol's silkscreens.
I got my first powerbook on May of 1995 and
from then on I looked into every piece of software
I could get. It was clear then to me, what I
should spy in order to learn about painting
: I should spy computers. What shall one paint,
is another fragile issue.
After
I painted the Sad Tree, a picture that includes
two strong trees and one weak , I decide to
represent computers.(by the way, the Sad Tree
makes a computation also: it counts two times
the same and one the opposite). Maurizio Catellan
asked me why computers. "Nobody has ever painted
them" I said. He said that's not important,
"it's not important if you paint oranges or
machines, important is the language"
I
believe that it is important to paint powerbooks
and QuickTake 100, because this way they enter
into the theatre of reality, exactly like Marilyn
did her entrance, after Warhol painted her.
Do you care about Betty Davis ? She doesn't
exist even if you'll cover the planet with her
posters, but Marilyn is an open question against
our surface of vision. In the same way I manage
so that IBM will not exist but Apple will. (Also
because Apple took it's name from the Beatles'
industry).
To
avoid any Pop references in my paintings, I
use in all of them, the same background. It
comes from the lighting of Soft Driller video
and it gives a connotation of an interior. Because
they are Objects , I decide to paint the same
picture many times.
This
saves you from the stress of what to paint next.
Miltos Manetas 1995
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