I don't believe that painting is dead. I do believe that every substantial painting has to acknowledge–visually–the pathogens threatening it: Its painfully close ties to the .01%; its long-time ownership by guys wielding big hairy sticks; a vast, overshadowing history of past excellence; a vast, overshadowing present of gross mediocrity (the worst mall art is almost all painted). The second I saw Monique Mouton's picture called “Rose", now in a group show at Wallspace in New York, it struck me as wearing its symptoms with pride. A classic, Greenbergian shaped canvas, ultimate symbol of painting-for-painting's-sake, becomes the bearer of clutching, bloody hand prints, as though the medium has been shot and is trying to keep from bleeding out.
