Press Release

In 1963, the Jewish Museum in Brooklyn gave us Towards a New Abstraction, an influential exhibition that featured Dan Flavin's first light tubes. Now, some fifty years later, the museum invites us to a panel discussion entitled What's At Stake For Abstract Painting Today -- and Where Do We Go From Here?

The panel, led by Bob Nickas, includes artists Joanne Greenbaum, Philip Taaffe, and Stanely Whitney. It asks:

Why, at a time when there is greater interest in abstraction, is so much art seemingly unconcerned with evolving the visual landscape? And why is so much of it embraced by collectors, and not by critics and curators? Perhaps one question answers the other. This panel considers: What's at stake for abstract painting today.

When much of what we see today isn't actually painted, claims to be conceptual, borders on design, eagerly lends itself to branding, and, self-satisfied to have been quote/unquote emptied of meaning, provides an inoffensive backdrop to an endless succession of art fairs and auctions. Of one point we are certain: there is nothing in any way abstract about this recent turn of events.

Reading through this description, one cannot help but ask: Are the questions raised based in reality? Is there a greater interest in abstraction?

I would say no more than usual.

Of this abstraction, is it "seemingly unconcerned with the evolving visual landscape?" If the question of an abstraction "embraced by collectors, and not by critics and artists[,]" constitutes an aspect of the "evolving visual landscape" (not so much the abstract work of art, but its function as a flag of conquest in the private spaces of collectors), then I would say, as much as art can be "concerned" with anything, its makers and agents are very much aware of -- and indeed contribute to -- this "evolving visual landscape."

To ask, "What's at stake for abstract painting today?" is (Eli) broad enough.

The sentence that leads off the second paragraph leads nowhere. Shouldn't it be placed before the sentence that ends the paragraph before it? As in:

This panel considers: What's at stake for abstract painting today[, w]hen much of what we see today isn't actually painted, claims to be conceptual, borders on design, eagerly lends itself to branding, and, self-satisfied to have been quote/unquote emptied of meaning, provides an inoffensive backdrop to an endless succession of art fairs and auctions[?]

As for the final sentence, let me rewrite that one too:

Of one point we are certain: there is nothing in any way abstract [about my reading of this press release].