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by Fang Lijun

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Illinois at the Phillips Spring 2009 Symposium, "Teaching Painting" »

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• Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion »
  500 E. Peabody Drive Champaign, IL 61820
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On Saturday, March 14 the University will host a symposium entitled “Teaching Painting.” The U of I and The Phillips Collection for the Study Modern Art in Washington D.C. have formed a partnership that supports symposia such as this among other exciting opportunities. As UIUC assistant professor of art history and symposium participant Terri Weissman explained, “the way that these symposia work, largely, is that they emerge out of a cultural gestalt and also specific interests of faculty members.” In the fall, The Phillips hosted “Painting in the 21st Century” which emerged from ideas explored by Suzanne Hudson in her book on the work of Robert Ryman. Hudson, a participant in both the fall symposium and this one, is interested in defining painting as a medium in the 21st century through an exploration of its specific components and how they function in what Weissman described as an “expanded field.”

Ideas discussed in the fall located painting within a theoretical framework, not necessarily confined by medium. Keynote speaker Stephen Melville delivered a talk that Weissman says did just that. She says, “even though he is trying to get to an idea of what painting is, in terms of brush stroke, framing structure, and canvas, the actual way in which painting was being discussed was somehow outside.” In an essay by Melville in the catalog from a 2001 exhibition entitled As Painting: Division and Displacement he writes of “this general idea – that a medium must be thought of in terms that actively link its internal possibilities to a larger system to which it belongs…” In a subsequent essay within this catalog Philip Armstrong and Laura Lisbon write, “we have decided to explore the structural limits of work that engages us within a dialectical circle that is ‘perpetually opened by its closures themselves,’ and with all the contradictions and overdeterminations that this necessarily implies.” In contrast to recent pluralistic conversations of painting, Armstrong and Lisbon, as well as Melville and Hudson, propose that there are concrete yet open sites for inquiry, within the limits of painting, that are useful to our understanding of the medium.

This all said, Saturday’s symposium will translate such ideas of this “expanded field” to the way in which painting is taught. Weissman explains, “how you teach painting obviously relates to how it’s conceived.” Weissman says, “I think this school in particular is a really great place to have this symposium because the painting department here is part of this trend in understanding painting beyond the parameters of formal matters.”

Here, Weissman alludes to this two-sided coin that I hear discussed often as a painting student myself. In conversation with my friends at UIUC and other art schools there is recurrent criticism surrounding the amount of formal training received as opposed to a conceptual emphasis. There emerges a perception among some art students that the two are seen as mutually exclusive and that the grass is always greener on the other side.

In this regard, I see the “Teaching Painting” symposium as necessary and productive not only for art historians and critics but also for students and educators. By examining painting as a malleable yet definable construction there exists a type of happy medium (no pun intended) between these two supposed extremes. I anticipate conversations at Saturday’s symposium to spark a sort of identity exploration of both the theory and practice of painting.