Modern Painting

There's a magazine by that name. The first time I saw it on a magazine rack, I had this brief "wow" moment. Well, it was a very brief "wow" moment. Perhaps a nanosecond in duration. Maybe not that long. For I opened the magazine and quickly surmised that "painting" was of little interest to the publishers. Why they call the mag Modern Painting is anybody's guess, unless they mean to be ironic.
So, lately it occurs to me that I called this blog "about art," and granted it does foray into a wide range of things even in just these few posts so far. But I suppose it will become quickly evident that even when I'm not talking about painting, I don't stray from the subject for very long. For me painting is art. Even drawing, for me, ultimately serves the ends of painting.
I don't think there's many publications or critics (or perhaps even painters) who think of art as narrowly as I do in this respect. Since the advent of "painting is dead" artists are reluctant to be identified with the alledgedly moribund form even when they are painters themselves. They are a little apologetic. I'm not.
I'm declaring that painting is "IT." Sure, there've been great sculptors -- Michelangelo, Bernini, Rodin, to name a few -- but real art has long found its home with the great, painted flat image. I'm proudly proclaiming that painting is still alive and well. Imaginations have sometimes died or nearly died or have sat there comatose. But I don't put anybody's failure of imagination at Painting's doorstep. It's a very difficult thing to become a great painter.
Take the 17th century, for instance. Who is really big? Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Velasquez. Some want to include Van Dyck, but one always does so with a bit of hesitance. Even Degas stuttered a little when the question of Van Dyke's status came up ....
But, my God, Van Dyck! Who can even paint Van Dyck's toenails today?
So, you see my point? Painting is not dead. It's artists that we lack. But painting is just fine, and merely awaits the arrival of somebody with worthy ideas, someone who knows how to see.