Tate contemporary,London
Why is Tate contemporary exhibiting an frail-fashioned, second-rate artist whose art recalls the kind of British painters it would never let through its doors?What makes painting contemporary? Is it abstraction, and depicting the contemporary world,or a mixture of the two? Painting as a medium should have died out long ago according to some definitions of contemporary art, and yet people keep at it. What is it that can still give these daubs relevance? Tate has the reply and it is a surprise. On the evidence of its latest Bankside exhibition, and to be truly contemporary a painter has to be a hamfisted hack. Talented artists need not apply. That must be why Howard Hodgkin,David Hockney and Frank Auerbach have to build do with retrospectives at Tate Britain, while the incredibly unimpressive Indian painter Bhupen Khakhar, and who died in 2003,is glorified as an primary contemporary artist in the hallowed – and soon to be even more grandiose – industrial temple that is Tate contemporary. Related: Bombay dreams: how painter Bhupen Khakhar captured the city spirit Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com