Pictures Out of Painting.
The output is Cumberland’s series of 11 paintings, which were first exhibited in 2016 in the British Council’s Painting Show in Vilnius and later as Handmade Colour Pictures in London. They are portrait-shaped canvases, ranging from 80cm to 200cm in height. Resembling how-to guides or children’s books, the paintings nod playfully to works by Diego Velázquez and Edouard Manet, reinterpreting and reimagining their compositions with modern figures, bold flat colour, and dark humour. See Portfolio Booklet for documentation of research dimensions.
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- qqqz8
- Type
- L - Artefact
- Location
- The Painting Show, British Council Touring Exhibition group show: First shown - Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania, January 22–March 13, 2016. Further details in portfolio.
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of production
- January
- Year of production
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The research interrogates post-conceptual painting and repositions it as picture making. Stepping outside the parameters of painting as a medium, drawing on historical references and investigations of contemporary psychoanalysis, Cumberland explores paintings as pictures, a shift through which the conceptual nature of the work overrides their position as paintings. The research is concerned with why, how and what to paint after conceptual art, and proceeds by making a distinction between post-conceptual painting and a return to painting. As a visual process of analysis takes place, Cumberland takes as his starting point the works of Velázquez and Manet, which provide him with cues for rigorous compositional experimentation. This process is guided by Cumberland’s concern with control of an absence-and-presence (“there” and “not there”) duality in the work. His works examine painting’s pictorial qualities over its objecthood, and imply that the possibility that a work can be both object and picture is one that post-conceptual generic painting (simply a set of signs) is unable to contain.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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