Internationally renowned art historian and professor Isabelle Graw considers what constitutes painting today and looks at current measures of value in painting, from artistic to economic, through the lens of art history and critical theory.
This lecture draws on Graw’s new book The Love of Painting: Genealogy of a Success Medium, (February 2018) that aims to establish where painting can be seen today. Graw´s talk explores the current popularity of painting from a historical and medium specific perspective in which to address Freud´s work and persona as a model that has both potential and problems when considered from a present vantage point.
This lecture will be followed by a closing discussion, moderated by Christina Kennedy, Head of IMMA Collections and Led Curator of the IMMA Collection: Freud Project 2016 – 2021.
Isabelle Graw is a professor of art theory and art history at the Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Künste (Städelschule) Frankfurt am Main, where she co-founded the Institute of Art Criticism. She is an art critic and co-founder of Texte zur Kunst in Berlin. She has edited and contributed to many important books on the medium of painting, most notably Painting Beyond Itself: The Medium in the Post-Medium Condition (Sternberg Press, 2016) and Thinking through Painting. Reflexivity and Agency beyond the Canvas (Sternberg Press, 2012). Her forthcoming book The Love of Painting: Genealogy of a Success Medium aims to establish where painting can be seen today and to reconstruct the historical origins of its current popularity.