Bad Painting - Influence

Influence

It is clear from her catalogue essay, that Tucker saw "Bad" Painting as a dilemma for notions of progress and assessment. ‘The freedom with which these artists mix classical and popular art-historical sources, kitsch and traditional images, archetypal and personal fantasies, constitutes a rejection of the concept of progress per se. . . . It would seem that, without a specific idea of progress toward a goal, the traditional means of valuing and validating works of art are useless. Bypassing the idea of progress implies an extraordinary freedom to do and to be whatever you want. In part, this is one of the most appealing aspects of "bad" painting - that the ideas of good and bad are flexible and subject to both the immediate and the larger context in which the work is seen.’

Unfortunately, Tucker does not supply this larger context, in which one might see a ‘progression’ of figurative painting styles up to 1978. Nor does she acknowledge that ‘the extraordinary freedom’ accorded the artist under such an arrangement is also useless, if standards for individuality multiply with number of individuals. Flexibility and subjectivity on these terms becomes excessive. Indeed, the development Tucker sketches might also be described as a drastic dissolution for the critic, whereby each work must be accorded its own style, each style applied only to one work. Comparison or assessment thus becomes futile. Badness, on these terms, has little to recommend it.

Bad Painting is sometimes seen a precursor to the wider movement of Neo-Expressionism that follows in the early 80s, a style with branches in Germany, Italy and France, amongst other nations. But there are important differences. Tucker’s selection does not concentrate upon large-scale works, featuring broad, urgent facture, applied to allegorical or metaphorical themes, frequently political or historical. Her selection is more wide-ranging. Bad Painting shares none of the shrillness, the social provocation often found in Neo-Expressionism. "Bad" Painting is typically more restrained, in scale and scope, more light-handed in touch, light-hearted in sentiment. Similarly, "Bad" Painting is often associated with New Image Painting, another trend in figurative painting defined by an exhibition later in 1978, curated by Richard Marshall. But there, the trend is focused upon New York-based artists and a derivation closer to that outlined for Jenney, who was also included.

Where "Bad" Painting does find later resonance is with the publication of Thrift Store Paintings by the painter Jim Shaw in 1990. As the title suggests, Shaw’s collection is drawn from humble, second-hand sources, rather than an explicit criterion of badness. But the collection is not concerned with surprising bargains for the conventional art collector. On the contrary, it is a catalogue of discarded or rejected tastes. It amounts to ‘bad’ painting, in the more general sense, of poor judgement, technical incompetence or outsider indulgence. Its appearance and impact in 1990 demonstrates a further plurality to figurative styles of painting, an extension to Bad Painting, although not an exhaustive one. Because of the priority given to place of purchase in Thrift Store Painting, works are mainly easel-scale and devoted to traditional themes, factual and fictional. There is no place for ‘bad’ Minimalism on a site-specific scale or geometric abstraction, for instance, no works abandoned by recent ambitious art students or failed post modernists. Thrift Store Paintings is devoted to the peripheral, the clumsy and comic, as was Tucker’s Bad Painting. The difference is that Shaw allows a wider array of figurative styles, from the Naïve to Surreal or Expressionist, the Photo-realistic to Pop or decorative. But again, importantly, works are never wholly of one style; instead, hover uncomfortably or ‘badly’ between conflicting categories, summoning too many standards, too weakly. Thrift Store Paintings is rarely linked to Bad Painting in published criticism, however.

Shaw’s publication was received favourably and led to later exhibitions. Critics still occasionally revile them, but this is perhaps to miss their sophisticated appeal, their potent suggestion. Their acceptance also coincides, and possibly prompts work by John Currin (b. 1962), Lisa Yuskavage(b. 1962) and George Condo (b. 1957), for example, where the focus is upon portraiture and stereotypes, much like Thrift Store Paintings, but provides a more directed mix of technical virtuosity with vulgarity, caricature with idealism, stylisation with realism. Such work is sometimes associated with ‘bad’ painting, for degrading or conflating traditional iconography, but the difference lies in a narrowed scope for these later artists. Fewer ‘bad’ elements are managed within a more obvious structure, are ‘bad’ perhaps in anatomy or drawing, but ‘good’ in volume or tone, colour or composition. Such work remains popular but generally earns no more precise grouping than Post Modern. By contrast, ‘bad painting’ has been invoked by the artist Albert Oehlen (b. 1954) for dual exhibitions, contrasting bodies of work dedicated to ‘bad painting’ and ‘good painting’. But Oehlen’s concern is really with accommodating figuration and abstraction within the same work, with demonstrating degrees or a spectrum between them. Good and bad here fall between a purity of means – formal or intrinsic properties to painting – and impurity of ends – extrinsic content to a picture. This is a far broader criterion for figurative painting than Tucker’s Bad Painting or related subsequent developments and gains little by an association.

Finally, the influence of "Bad" Painting was not immediate or sustained, on American painting or internationally. Albertson, Carrillo, Chatelain, Hendon, Hilton, Siler and Staley achieved no wider recognition. However, the style anticipated a growing interest in other kinds of pictures for painting, not exclusively predicated upon print models, not exclusively private or remote.