Painting as commitment
Painting as commitment
Jean-Paul Sartre opens What is Literature? with the comment: ‘No, we do not want to “commit” painting, sculpture, and music “too”, or at least not in the same way. And why would we want to?’. Sartre’s idea of the committed writer was a dominant and evocative account of intellectuals of the Left in the immediate post-war period, but was superseded with the arrival of ‘theory’ from Althusser onwards; and with post-structuralist notions fully decentering the subject. What might this mean for the painter? Taking an existential account of painting as its starting point, the article offers a reappraisal of the anti-aesthetic and postmodern debates of the 1980s, and suggests the need to re-situate painting as commitment in itself. Rather than simply the need to place painting within wider social networks, it is the inherent appeal to freedom that remains significant about the medium.
55-81
Manghani, Sunil
75650a9a-458d-4e1a-9480-94491300e385
Manghani, Sunil
75650a9a-458d-4e1a-9480-94491300e385
Abstract
Jean-Paul Sartre opens What is Literature? with the comment: ‘No, we do not want to “commit” painting, sculpture, and music “too”, or at least not in the same way. And why would we want to?’. Sartre’s idea of the committed writer was a dominant and evocative account of intellectuals of the Left in the immediate post-war period, but was superseded with the arrival of ‘theory’ from Althusser onwards; and with post-structuralist notions fully decentering the subject. What might this mean for the painter? Taking an existential account of painting as its starting point, the article offers a reappraisal of the anti-aesthetic and postmodern debates of the 1980s, and suggests the need to re-situate painting as commitment in itself. Rather than simply the need to place painting within wider social networks, it is the inherent appeal to freedom that remains significant about the medium.
Text
JCP-Manghani-Painting-As-Committment-FINAL
- Accepted Manuscript
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Accepted/In Press date: 1 March 2017
e-pub ahead of print date: 1 April 2017
Organisations:
Research Centre
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Local EPrints ID: 406758
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/406758
ISSN: 2052-6695
PURE UUID: a957dc8c-ed3f-4d6d-a085-eaca989a21d8
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Date deposited: 22 Mar 2017 02:07
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 05:08
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