Surely the medium of painting will never be replaced by the most recent and most limited of mediums that ironically have itself a shelf life in the 21st century by over-dependency on 'the dark room'? Or has the dark room been the chemical technological creative game-changer that has relaunched painting? Not an eye for an eye but from the same iris as the new 20/20 vision that infuses cultural potential?
Why? Also isn't it a bit subjective? Photos are often characterised as compared with the medium of Painting in a reductive way. Photography is largely a 20th century pillar of mainstream Art as well as a crucial source of journalism, but Painting today defies definitional gravity! Painting is self-sustainable as witnessed of in spite of The Art Top Table's relegation of it in lieu of technology and conceptual Art; it hasn't destroyed Painting it has only slow-rolled its contemporary relevance and saleability of it, only putting a primer on it to see if it can survive such an ordeal.....it has! But could any other medium have survived such alienation from mainstream Art? Perhaps not!
Let's just recognise the tech movement away from the photo (that Painting is not susceptible to), away from the camera to the mobile phone and to film itself, where mobile phones have functioned as an expose' en masse to all forms of public demonstrations in which there has been violence by local law enforcement! Mobile phone footage has been the camera upgrade from still photo's to animating mainstream public contextualisation for 20 years around the world It has been the people's friend and the journalistic instrument for prosecution and evidential impact! However, just as the internet, that once was a democratising influence, so mobile phone footage has become corrupted by social media, hacking and false and fake news, like the apparent unrepentant misuse of Photoshop!
So, even if I agreed that Painting may have become 'out of date' compared with instantaneous photo-images beamed all over the world, at least you have to make an unerring replica of a Painting which only a handful of Artist's can do, because otherwise Painting is not corrupt! Powerful men no longer commission Painters to paint flattering vanity portraits, instead they buy 20th and pre 20th century Paintings as profit-makers, a new trophy currency that they lock away from the public from being inspired by them, and further acquire status by making them exclusive and thus rare. This is exclusive privilege by downgrading contemporary work to maximise their investment in which TATT and the market end up validating by not regulating the practice of, in effect, purchase and investment laundering!!! This imposed 'fake historicising' is like those fakes that are painted today but are subjected to a 'resin' to instantaneously age them to look like they are 4 centuries older! It's a con! Yet this practice of 'removing contemporary Painting from the agenda' is still upheld by the inaction of TATT! Isn't that negligence or failing the general public whose annual wage is probably a thousandth(?) of the less expensive of a Cubist Painting' painted in 1910! When I say do the maths, you can now see why I'm not so .. accurate, but you and I get the gist! And does TATT admit it's manipulating the market by its style of ‘accountancy'? It's laughing all the way to the proverbial bank!!! It brings money into the Art world, and ...............distributes it.??????. But does it?
Photo's only stop, halt and hold-up any bonding with contemporary Painting because Painting is image unmanipulated whereas photos are now more corrupted by being technically adapted from the Darkroom. Really? We share the same 'Iris', the same eye!!? The skill set of Photography will expand whenever technology changes and will always come online down the line in the digital age! But traditionalists are just as unique as Painters because of their immediacy when capturing something beyond high technology and is still based upon delimiting any possible tech interference that pollutes the Photographer's eye! Yes, the same eye, the unique Iris that is the shared companion between Painter and traditionalist Photographers! That is the very humanity of sensorial originality that both grounds these media and could both never fade in the practice of them that is mutually inclusive without the dark room!
Here human growth is often marked with both the adaptation of new tech with old wisdom, and gives it terrestrial validation, which means that human advancement is not only at a singular point in time, and in the case of Painting, it enjoys episodic but constant changes of peaks and troughs. That suits the medium of Painting so well. It's a permanent fixture, a keeper! Painting has not experienced much technological advancement in the basic use of its components - they have largely been untouched by tech, unlike Digital world of Photography, notwithstanding those who don't rely on such tech as traditionalist exponents of Photography! But it does reveal Paintings' independence from the need to rely on tech and illustrates its self-sustainability too!
So, is it the case that Painting isn't seen as the avant-garde by the TATT because of its excessive influence on the public? Furthermore, isn't photography used to undermine the medium of Painting that is contrasted with largely a recent medium (19th century) contrasted with ancient 'yesterday's news' Painting? Does the TATT fear or feel a modicum of envy, or has TATT felt it wanted to halt Painting's enduring influence because (or not) of it not being as technically advanced as Tech Art, AI etc? Or does AI and the digital world and all Art Tech actually have very powerful corporate multinational investors, who may want to advertise their latest product, or whose latest product 'is the Art' itself???!!!
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