If there’s any medium that’s proven surprisingly controversial in the past ten years, it’s painting. Some have claimed painting is dead, and some have claimed the medium is particularly vital right now; some have bemoaned the proliferation of contemporary abstraction that hits the auction block, and some have energetically promoted a new crop of figurative painters; and some, like ARTnews contributor Greg Allen, have jokingly turned it into a hashtag (#painting) on Twitter.
Amid all these discussions comes Painting: Now and Forever III, the third version of an exhibition first organized by Pat Hearn and Matthew Marks in 1998. (The show was reprised, with major variations, in 2008, when it was organized by Marks and Carol Greene.) The new show will be staged at New York’s Matthew Marks and Greene Naftali galleries, with sections on view from June 28 through August 17 at Marks’s two West 22nd Street venues and at Greene’s ground-floor and eighth-floor spaces. “The show always attempts to address a shifting landscape of ideas and material concerns in the world, and how painting specifically can [be involved in] this,” Greene told ARTnews.
More than 40 artists will be included in the show’s latest version, among them Sam Gilliam, Nicole Eisenman, and Jasper Johns. There will be pioneers of a different era, like the newly rediscovered Howardena Pindell (who was recently profiled by ARTnews) and the 97-year-old Luchita Hurtado (whose work is included in this year’s Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum). And a number of young artists are included, too—Julien Ceccaldi, Mathieu Malouf, Avery Singer, Jeanette Mundt, and Whitney Claflin, to name just a few.
—Alex Greenberger