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?
Editorial
Feature
Flirting with Death: Dispatches Along 19th to 21st Century Painting
The Object of the Idea
Guy Pellerin : Painting Distance (A Mental Construction Made Visible)
Stéphane La Rue, Color as Illusion of Painting
Blind Spots, Caesurae and Other Archival Lacunae
Dark Thoughts: Jinny Yu Starts Where Painting Ends
Relics as New Monuments: Destroyed painting
Performative art follows painting’s footsteps. The case of Vanessa Beecroft
Derek Sullivan More Young Americans
Body and Chaos in Christine Major’s Recent Work
The Animated World of Marina Roy
Portfolios
Columns
Reviews
Young Critics
Current Issue
Plastics
Winter 2025
Analyzing plastic in the field of art runs the risk of raising many environmental dilemmas. Far from extolling plastic yet without denying its utility, this issue is interested in our ways of coexisting with synthetic material in order to evaluate the consequences and seek alternative solutions and to claim a kinship with what gives this material its glory: its plasticity, which expresses the power both to receive and to give form.
Cover: Dan Lam
Nibble, 2020.
Photo: courtesy of Dan Lam Studio, Dallas