New Image Painting and Beyond

Abstract

In 1965, the American minimalist sculptor and writer Donald Judd announced the end of painting. All of the new pictorial approaches that emerged in America and Europe from the 1970s onwards as a kind of reaction to conceptual-based approaches were expressed under the definition of "new expressionism". Modernist art and conceptualist tendencies that excluded traditional artistic elements led to the reclaiming of these elements. The paintings in the exhibition organised in 1978, the first time the "new imagism" movement was seen together, were painted with an expressionist approach. This new imagist movement offers an alternative to the abstraction and industrial forms of minimalist art, with its semi-abstract figures and objects formed in the search for imagery within/on the surface of flat abstract fields, and its flat silhouettes that simply evoke. The "new image painting", which first made its name in 1978 with the exhibition organised by Richard Marshall at the Whitney Museum of American Art under the title "New Image Painting", which included ten artists, later found a place in Tony Godfrey's book " The New Image Painting in The 1980's ". This research focuses on the 1978 exhibition.  By analysing three exhibitions that are thought to be related afterwards, it intends to search for and discuss the existence of new imagism in contemporary art. Therefore, other exhibitions following the 1978 exhibition will also be analysed.  The other exhibitions that exemplify the subject are firstly the exhibition "From Icon to Symbol: Images American Art, 1973-1979" at the Blum Helman Warehause. The second is the exhibition organised in 1981 under the title "A New Spirit Painting". The third and final exhibition was organised in 2018 under the title "A New Spirit Painting Then, A New Spirit Painting Now 1981-2018", again referring to the previous exhibition. As a result, new imagism, which still finds a place in contemporary art, is far from being a temporary art movement. New imagism, which continues to exist in the field of painting, is in a position to question personal and collective memory with the images it creates today.

Keywords: New Imagism, New Expressionism, Contemporary art, Richard Marslall, Tony Godfrey.

DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/14-5-08

Publication date: June 30^th 2024