Discovering "Bad" Painting: American Figurative Art offers a fascinating look into a pivotal moment in the 1970s art scene. This unique trend, named by critic and curator Marcia Tucker, challenged traditional art norms by embracing a humorous, sardonic, and intensely personal view of the world. Far from being technically incompetent, "Bad" Painting was an ironic title for "good painting" that consciously rejected classical drawing modes and conventional artistic attitudes. This article provides a comprehensive overview for students, breaking down its characteristics, key artists, historical context, and lasting influence.
What is "Bad" Painting: American Figurative Art?
"Bad" Painting is an art movement coined by Marcia Tucker, director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, for an exhibition held from January 14 to February 28, 1978. It highlighted a trend in American figurative painting during the 1970s. Tucker's title was intentionally ironic, meant to describe a deliberate disrespect for prevailing art styles rather than actual poor technical skill. The style embraced deformation of the figure, mixed art-historical and non-art resources, and featured fantastic and irreverent content.
It represented a challenge to the prevalent "classicizing" styles of Minimalism and Photo-realism, which dominated American painting at the time. "Bad" Painting celebrated eccentric and amusing deviations from accepted tastes, offering artists extraordinary freedom to explore new expressions.
Key Characteristics of "Bad" Painting
Marcia Tucker outlined several defining traits for this distinctive art style:
- Rejection of Classical Drawing Modes: Artists discarded traditional draftsmanship in favor of more personal, often distorted, figurative styles.
- Humorous, Sardonic, Personal View: The works often presented a witty, critical, and deeply individual perspective on the world.
- Iconoclasm and Antagonism: A shared theme among the artists was a challenging spirit, often expressed through parody.
- Mixture of Art-Historical and Non-Art Resources: "Bad" Painting frequently blended elements from fine art with sources like comics, commercial illustration, and kitsch.
- Disregard for Accurate Representation: The artists consciously moved away from realistic depiction.
- Rejection of Conventional Attitudes: It challenged established notions of "good taste" and artistic progress.
Prominent Artists of the "Bad" Painting Exhibition
The 1978 exhibition at the New Museum featured fourteen artists who largely shared these sensibilities. While some were known in their local communities, many were not widely recognized in New York at the time.
Artists included:
- James Albertson (1944–2015)
- Joan Brown (1938–1990)
- Eduardo Carrillo (1937–1997)
- James Chatelain (b. 1947)
- Cply (William Copley) (1919–1996)
- Charles Garabedian (1923–2016)
- Cham Hendon (1936–2014)
- Joseph Hilton (b. 1946)
- Neil Jenney (b. 1945)
- Judith Linhares (b. 1943)
- Walter Siler (b. 1939)
- Earl Staley (b. 1938)
- Shari Urquhart (b. 1938)
- William Wegman (b. 1943)
The Stylistic Context and Influences of "Bad" Painting
The roots of "Bad" Painting can be traced to preceding developments in figurative painting of the 1960s and 70s. These earlier styles progressively departed from mass print imagery while defining the differences between painting and prints.
Pop Art and its Legacy
Pop Art pioneers like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein extensively used cartoons and banal illustrations. Their work inspired subsequent artists to explore other types of cartoon and illustration sources, leading to a focus on distinguishing painting from print media. The ironic use of art historical references in Pop Art, such as Warhol's Mona Lisa, also set a precedent for later allusions.
The Hairy Who and Californian Funk Art
Groups like The Hairy Who and Funk Art in San Francisco broadened Pop Art's project. They adopted more stylized or abstracted cartoon characters and maintained a strong illustrational style with fine outlines and flat colors. While their content became less obviously popular, the cool detachment in their painting manner remained.
Pattern and Decoration (P&D) Movement
P&D emerged from Minimalist abstraction, evolving to incorporate overlapping planes, shadows, and concrete objects in symmetrical patterns. This style drew sources from textiles, wallpaper, and wrapping paper. P&D often introduced a vulgar or kitsch quality through earnest, sentimental motifs, especially when viewed as painting rather than print.
These influences led to a steady diffusion of print sources and the means by which painting distinguished itself from them. "Bad" Painting signaled a further dissolution of this project, arriving at what could be termed a "bad" icon or an icon treated "badly."
"Bad" Painting Groupings by Style
While Marcia Tucker did not explicitly divide the exhibition's artists, their works can be grouped to demonstrate the consistency of her selections, despite some misleading descriptions:
- Illustrational Styles from Remote Print Sources: Artists like James Albertson, Eduardo Carrillo, Joseph Hilton, and Earl Staley favored broad-brushed styles akin to movie posters or magazine illustration. Their works often used humorous or allegorical scenes, sometimes clashing with classical drawing principles.
- Example: Albertson's Sex, Violence, Religion + The Good Life (1976) uses a broad-brushed style reminiscent of older magazine illustrations, juxtaposing humorous content with an earnest title.
- Comic-Strip/Cartoon Influences with Stylized Drawing: Cply and Walter Siler retained strong outlines, stylized drawing, and flat colors, reminiscent of comic strips. Cply's figures were looser, aligning with P&D, while Siler's casual arrangements shared affinities with Chicago Imagists and Funk artists.
- Example: Siler's Spookie Stove (1976) demonstrates these comic-strip affinities with a casual arrangement.
- Pattern and Decoration Derivation: Joan Brown, Charles Garabedian, Cham Hendon, Judith Linhares, Shari Urquhart, and William Wegman emphasized decorative, frontal motifs, often on fabric supports. Repeating motifs and bold colors, typical of textile design, were prominent.
- Example: Joan Brown's Woman Wearing a Mask (1972) features a centralized motif with flat colors and patterned elements, appealing to Tucker with its insouciant confluence of styles.
- Vigorously Brushed Grounds and Simple Motifs: Neil Jenney and James Chatelain employed vigorously brushed grounds for central, simple objects. Their derivation leaned towards Jasper Johns' use of stencils and impasto strokes, creating a tension between precise outlines and bold brushwork.
- Example: Jenney's Girl and Vase (1969), despite being older work, showcased his concept of "bad drawing" by contrasting a precise outline with boldly brushed filling.
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The Influence and Legacy of "Bad" Painting
Marcia Tucker viewed "Bad" Painting as a dilemma for traditional notions of artistic progress and assessment. She highlighted the freedom artists gained by rejecting the idea of progress, allowing them to mix diverse sources and challenge established values. This flexibility, however, also raised questions about the utility of traditional means of valuing art.
While not an immediate or sustained international movement, "Bad" Painting is sometimes seen as a precursor to Neo-Expressionism (early 1980s) and New Image Painting (also 1978). However, it differs in its typically more restrained scale, scope, and light-hearted sentiment compared to Neo-Expressionism's broad, urgent facture and often political themes. New Image Painting focused more narrowly on New York artists with a derivation closer to Neil Jenney's style.
A later resonance for "Bad" Painting appeared with Jim Shaw's 1990 publication Thrift Store Paintings. This collection cataloged discarded or rejected tastes, amounting to "bad" painting in a broader sense of poor judgment or technical incompetence. Shaw's work demonstrated a further plurality of figurative styles, from Naïve to Surreal, Pop, or decorative, often hovering uncomfortably between conflicting categories. This acceptance possibly influenced later artists like John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, and George Condo, who combine technical virtuosity with vulgarity or caricature.
Ultimately, "Bad" Painting remains a valuable lens through which to examine American figurative painting in the late 1970s. It detected a pervasive dissolution in art, challenging traditional ideas of artistic evolution and opening doors for future explorations of irony, personal vision, and unconventional aesthetics.
Frequently Asked Questions about "Bad" Painting
What was the main purpose of the "Bad" Painting exhibition?
The main purpose of the "Bad" Painting exhibition was to showcase a trend in American figurative painting where artists deliberately challenged prevailing "classicizing" styles like Minimalism and Photo-realism. It celebrated artists who discarded traditional drawing modes to present a humorous, sardonic, and intensely personal view of the world, ironically calling it "good painting" through its "bad" title.
Who curated the "Bad" Painting exhibition?
Marcia Tucker, the director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, curated the "Bad" Painting exhibition. She also coined the term "Bad" Painting to describe the artistic trend.
How did "Bad" Painting challenge traditional art concepts?
"Bad" Painting challenged traditional art concepts by rejecting classical drawing modes, accurate representation, and conventional attitudes about art. It mixed high art with "non-high-art sources" like comics and commercial illustrations, embraced iconoclasm, and questioned the very idea of artistic progress, making the concepts of "good" and "bad" art flexible and contextual.
Is "Bad" Painting related to Neo-Expressionism?
While "Bad" Painting is sometimes seen as a precursor to Neo-Expressionism, there are important differences. "Bad" Painting was typically more restrained in scale and scope, lighter in touch, and light-hearted in sentiment. Neo-Expressionism, which followed in the early 1980s, often featured large-scale works with broad, urgent brushstrokes applied to allegorical or political themes, possessing a greater shrillness and social provocation.
What is an example of a "Bad" Painting artist and their work?
An example of a "Bad" Painting artist is Joan Brown, whose Woman Wearing a Mask (1972) was a standout in the exhibition. This work showcases flat colors, a centralized motif, and an "insouciant confluence of styles" with its witty, trompe-l'œil cat mask and references to advertising in the details of the woman's attire.