Susan Klein
Three Rainbows
Oil on canvas and wood, 60×48 in., 2017

Oh you drama queen
Hey you hubristic king
Sound the siren!
It’s PAINTING in CRISIS!

Painting is old, painting is dead
Painting is reborn in late capitalist revival!
The market demands it!
Couches deserve it!
Maybe

Crisis of criticality? Crisis of commodity?

But a crisis of touch!
Paintings want to be seen
Did you know they wanted to be touched and smelled,
felt up, sized up, inhaled?
A presence of real-time decisions visible on that old picture plane.
PALPABLE OBJECT AND WINDOW, YOU ARE SPATIAL
You are special.

But is it your fate to be forever embalmed on a phone?
Preserved, desiccated
on a small screen lit up by RGB color
that cannot record every pigment visible to the human eye.
The Flattener
The Evener-Outer

THE PHONE

Ultimate Democracy
painting to be consumed
painting that travels
painting that is seen but never felt
painting hidden by a screen at the mercy of the digital zoom in
painting given 2.5 seconds, the once over, the appraisal, the summation
hey that looks cool
hey I like that
hey it’s an Instagram release
a pet portrait party and everyone is invited
look at me
me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me

an image void of ideas, of physicality.
the rough and tumble made glossy.
slowness made immediate.
the crisis of the avoidance of
solitude,
singularity,
merging of body, mind, eye, brain, heart, hand, knee, gut, bowel
Mourning the Loss of the Gnarly Terrain.