Summary

76

The Idea of Painting

Fall 2012

Painting has more often than once been declared dead, yet it has nevertheless remained at the heart of artistic practices. The revival of interest that painting seems to be enjoying today has thus inspired the magazine esse arts + opinions to further explore this phenomenon. What to think of the dramatic “reappearance” of gestuality and technical virtuosity in the practice of the medium? Also, what can be said of the general scepticism directed towards painting for its supposed “natural” complicity with the art market? What about the notions of the window, the screen, and tableau, which have provided painting with its various theoretical models throughout history?

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Current Issue

Crip

Spring Summer 2026

While “handi” (short for the term “handicapé” in French) and “crip” (derived from “cripple,” meaning “disabled”) are diminutive forms of stigmatizing terms, the meaning we ascribe to them is by no means reductive. On the contrary, they carry a political weight that provides those who embrace them with a powerful tool for empowerment, offering disabled artists non-normative ways for articulating the strange temporalities of disabled experience and alternative ways for navigating an ableist art world. In this issue, we are interested precisely in this work of social, political, and cultural transformation, and we focus on the ways in which crip authors and artists address the different challenges they face.

Cover: Hac Vinent
Accident, exhibition view, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 2024.
Photo: Roberto Ruiz, courtesy of the artist & ADN Galeria, Barcelona

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