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Lot Essay
Mark Tansey has examined modernist notions of form and content with wit and dexterity for the better part of the last decade. In End of Painting, Tansey has painted an extremely complex "picture within a picture": a gunslinger, projected on a movie screen, destroys a reflection of himself seen in a mirror within the picture.
By depicting a "picture within a picture" Tansey has deconstructed what he sees as the imperious dictates of Clement Greenberg's formalist theory: that is, that the ultimate destiny of painting is the elimination of any form or content not coextensive with the medium of painting itself. Tansey's cocky "anti-hero" might symbolize the artists of the 1980's who broke the superiority of orthodox modern practice and cracked the dictates of the formalist aesthetics that dominated the art scene of the 1970s, re-introducing metaphorical content and figuration where it had been banned in favor of a decade of formalist abstraction.
By depicting a "picture within a picture" Tansey has deconstructed what he sees as the imperious dictates of Clement Greenberg's formalist theory: that is, that the ultimate destiny of painting is the elimination of any form or content not coextensive with the medium of painting itself. Tansey's cocky "anti-hero" might symbolize the artists of the 1980's who broke the superiority of orthodox modern practice and cracked the dictates of the formalist aesthetics that dominated the art scene of the 1970s, re-introducing metaphorical content and figuration where it had been banned in favor of a decade of formalist abstraction.