Expanded Painting

The relevance of painting has been questioned many times over the last century, by the arrival of photography, installation art and digital technologies. But rather than accept the death of painting, Mark Titmarsh traces a paradoxical interface between this art form and its opposing forces to define a new practice known as 'expanded painting' giving the term historical context, theoretical structure and an important place in contemporary practice. As the formal boundaries tumble, the being of painting expands to become a kind of total art incorporating all other media including sculpture, video and performance.
Painting is considered from three different perspectives: ethnology, art theory and ontology. From an ethnological point of view, painting is one of any number of activities that takes place within a culture. In art theory terms, painting is understood to produce objects of interest for humanities disciplines. Yet painting as a medium often challenges both its object and image status, 'expanding' and creating hybrid works between painting, objects, screen media and text. Ontologically, painting is understood as an object of aesthetic discourse that in turn reflects historical states of being. Thus, Expanded Painting delivers a new kind of saying, a post-aesthetic discourse that is attuned to an uncanny tension between the presence and absence of painting.

Mark Titmarsh is a visual artist working in painting, video and writing. He is lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies, in the School of Design, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. His artworks are held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia and in private collections overseas.

preface
acknowledgements
Introduction: Presence of Paint
1.Painting
An Ecology of Painting?
Fieldworks
Painting Expanded
Post Aesthetics
Research-Making
2. Expanded Painting
The Death of Painting
Cave, church, easel, other
Another beginning
(i) Early 20th Century avant-garde - Punching through the screen
(ii) 1960s Conceptual Art and Minimalism - The Escape from Painting
(iii) 1980s Neo-Conceptualism - Painting Forgotten and the Misnomer of Installation Art
(iv) Recent expanded painting - Not painting Now
Craftiness
3. Post Aesthetics
Questioning Ontology
Picturing Worlds
Falls the Shadow
Revelation
Thinking Earth
Four Earths
Thinking World
Absent Nature
Pres-absential
Strifely Assemblages
Coming to Presence
Ontology of Making
Making Heidegger Paint
Paint-Tool
The Being of Becoming
Thinking Making
Causing Making
Genres of production
Producing Expanded Painting
Post Aesthetics
Phainesthetics
Post Aesthetic Enigma
Applied Post Aesthetics
Applied Heidegger
4. Ontology of Colour
What is Colour?
Colourism
Colour IS
Apprehending Light
The Idea of Light
The Good Light
The other look
Moment of Vision
Conclusion: The Painting of Being
Paint itself
The Idea of Expanded Painting
In a new light
Ontological Aesthetics
Politics of Being
Ontological Goods
index