Is painting relevant in the contemporary art world Essay

Is painting relevant in the contemporary art world - Essay Example The essay "Is painting relevant in the contemporary art world" discusses the relevance of the painting to the contemporary art world. This medium is painting. Although painting has continually reinvented itself throughout modern history (from the Renaissance to Modernism), it has slowly fallen out of the spotlight in major art competitions as technique has regressed behind the initial idea and aesthetic quality of a particular piece. Despite this, art in general has the innate ability to transform itself continuously and fluidly throughout the course of history in the western world. â€Å"We can see the destruction and de-construction of painting throughout the progression of movements that we have endured over the past 80 years† (Pearce). But is painting dead in today’s art world? Painting is constrained by numerous limitations which the artist is confined to work within. A painting lacks motion, is bounded by only two-dimensions and is confined by space, size and mobi lity, as the work is restricted by the choice of canvas. Because or despite these limitations, contemporary artists have taken a drastically different approach to painting. â€Å"Fast-forward to today’s modern art scene, where young British artist Damien Hirst can knock out ‘spin paintings’ – haphazard blurs of color scattered from a stepladder – in a matter of hours, and then sell them for $18,000. While he at least put paint on canvas, Hirst’s most famous pieces are light years away from the brush work of the old masters†.