In the vibrant and sometimes challenging world of 1970s American art, a distinctive trend emerged that deliberately questioned established norms: "Bad" Painting. Coined by critic and curator Marcia Tucker, this term doesn't imply poor technical skill, but rather an intentional departure from the prevailing "good taste" and styles like Minimalism and Photo-realism. This comprehensive guide will help you understand this pivotal art movement and its impact on contemporary art.
Understanding "Bad" Painting in 1970s Art: An Overview
"Bad" Painting refers to a specific trend in American figurative painting during the 1970s. Marcia Tucker brought this concept to prominence with a groundbreaking exhibition of the same name at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, which ran from January 14 to February 28, 1978.
Tucker's definition of "Bad" Painting highlighted a focused disrespect for recent styles of painting. It was an "ironic title for 'good painting'" characterized by several key features. These included a deformation of the figure, a blend of art-historical and non-art resources, and fantastic and irreverent content.
The Exhibition and Its Intent
The New Museum's exhibition showcased fourteen artists, many of whom were not widely known in New York at the time. Tucker aimed to challenge the concept of artistic progress, stating that the artists' mix of sources and fantasies "constitutes a rejection of the concept of progress per se... Bypassing the idea of progress implies an extraordinary freedom."
This freedom was appealing, as it suggested that "the ideas of good and bad are flexible and subject to both the immediate and the larger context in which the work is seen." The exhibition raised controversial issues about the nature and use of imagery in recent American art.
Key Characteristics of "Bad" Painting
Marcia Tucker's criterion for "Bad" Painting was initially broad, allowing for artists who "discarded classical drawing modes in order to present a humorous, often sardonic, intensely personal view of the world." However, in practice, her selection was much stricter, excluding established Expressionists or caricaturists.
Key characteristics that define "Bad" Painting include:
- Deformation of the Figure: A conscious move away from accurate representation.
- Mixing Resources: Combining high-art historical references with "non-high-art sources," such as comics and commercial illustration.
- Fantastic and Irreverent Content: Artworks often featured humorous, sardonic, and even scandalous themes that disregarded conventional artistic standards.
- Rejection of Progress: A questioning of traditional means of valuing and validating art, embracing an "extraordinary freedom."
- Personal Styles: Artists developed highly individualistic approaches to figuration.
The "Bad" as an Ironic Badge of Approval
Tucker's use of scare quotes around "Bad" underscored its ironic meaning. It wasn't about incompetence but about an intentional, often amusing, deviation from the accepted aesthetic standards of the time. This artistic approach was at once funny and moving, frequently scandalous in its disregard for "good taste."
Preceding Styles and Their Influence
"Bad" Painting didn't emerge in a vacuum; it built upon or reacted against several preceding art movements. It signaled a "final dissolution" of a project that explored the differences between painting and print media.
- Pop Art: Pioneers like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein used cartoons and banal illustrations, prompting other artists to explore similar themes. Their work often highlighted the differences between painting and prints, sometimes with art historical references like Warhol's Mona Lisa.
- The Hairy Who: This Chicago group broadened the use of stylized or abstracted cartoon captions and characters, drawing inspiration from naive and outsider art as well as Pop Art graphics.
- Funk Art: San Francisco artists, such as William T. Wiley, adopted strong illustrational styles with fine outlines and flat colors, even with less familiar content, maintaining a cool detachment.
- Pattern and Decoration (P&D): Deriving from Minimalist abstraction, P&D expanded to include symmetrical patterns, serial motifs, and figuration, often sourcing textiles, wallpaper, and wrapping paper. When these elements were removed from a print context and scrutinized as painting, they often acquired a "vulgar or kitsch quality," signaling the project's exhaustion.
Featured Artists in the "Bad" Painting Exhibition
The 1978 exhibition brought together a diverse group of artists. While Tucker didn't categorize them in her essay, their works can be loosely grouped to demonstrate the consistency of her selection.
Group 1: Illustrational Styles from Print Sources
These artists highlighted illustrational styles, though often more remotely than Pop Art. Their work often showed a clash of styles, suggesting a "poverty or 'badness' to standards."
- James Albertson (1944–2015): Known for mock symbolic or allegorical scenes like Sex, Violence, Religion + The Good Life (1976), which offered humorous content in a broad-brushed style akin to movie posters.
- Eduardo Carrillo (1937–1997): His large-scale Los Tropicanas (1974) depicted futuristic scenes with glowing skeletons, blending science fiction and Surrealism, a genre native to print.
- Joseph Hilton (b. 1946): Featured architectural scenes from Roman and Medieval painting with stylized figures, similar to architectural illustration.
- Earl Staley (b. 1938): Also favored illustrative print-derived styles.
Group 2: Comic-Strip and Animated Cartoon Affinities
Artists in this group retained strong outlines, stylized drawing, and mostly flat colors characteristic of comics.
- Cply (William Copley) (1919–1996): His figures were looser than typical comic strips, and his work showed attention to pattern and decorative flattening, aligning with P&D.
- Walter Siler (b. 1939): His casual arrangements, such as Spookie Stove (1976), shared affinities with Chicago Imagists and Funk artists, showing a weakening distinction between styles.
Group 3: Derivations from Pattern and Decoration (P&D)
This group emphasized decorative, frontal motifs, often highlighting fabric supports and repeating patterns.
- Joan Brown (1938–1990): Her Woman Wearing a Mask (1972) was a standout, featuring modish black lace lingerie and a witty, trompe-l'œil cat mask, executed in casual brushstrokes.
- Charles Garabedian (1923–2016): His Adam and Eve (1977) featured a single, central motif with a border.
- Cham Hendon (1936–2014): Known for tapestry-like works like Mallard with Friend (1977).
- Judith Linhares (b. 1939): Her Turkey (1977) also featured a central motif and bright colors typical of textile design.
- Shari Urquhart (b. 1938): Her Interior with Sugar Talk (1977) incorporated repeating motifs as bold wallpaper.
- William Wegman (b. 1943): Also included in this group, contributing to the decorative focus.
Group 4: Vigorous Brushwork and Simple Motifs
This group's derivation was less from Pop Art and print sources, and more from Jasper Johns' use of stencils and templates.
- Neil Jenney (b. 1945): His work from the late 1960s, like Girl and Vase (1969), used simple outlines with boldly brushed filling. Jenney himself described this development as "bad drawing."
- James Chatelain (b. 1947): Examples like Untitled (1977) extended Jenney's approach, with more cursory figures and greater prominence given to impasto brushwork, creating an "icon treated 'badly'."
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The Influence and Legacy of "Bad" Painting
Marcia Tucker saw "Bad" Painting as a "dilemma for notions of progress and assessment." She believed it signaled a "pervasive dissolution," but ultimately, the style itself was too diffuse and peripheral to exert an immediate or sustained decisive influence on American or international painting.
Connections to Later Movements
- Neo-Expressionism: While sometimes seen as a precursor, "Bad" Painting differs. Neo-Expressionism, which followed in the early 1980s, often featured large-scale works with broad, urgent brushwork, focused on allegorical or political themes, and had a more shrill, socially provocative tone. "Bad" Painting was generally more restrained in scale and scope.
- New Image Painting: Another trend defined by an exhibition later in 1978, curated by Richard Marshall, focused on New York-based artists, often with a derivation similar to Neil Jenney's work.
Resonance with "Thrift Store Paintings"
"Bad" Painting found later resonance with Jim Shaw's 1990 publication Thrift Store Paintings. Shaw's collection, drawn from humble, second-hand sources, presented a catalogue of "discarded or rejected tastes." These works amounted to "bad" painting in a more general sense of poor judgment or technical incompetence. They celebrated the peripheral, the clumsy, and the comic, mirroring Tucker's "Bad" Painting but allowing a wider array of figurative styles, from Naive to Surreal, Photo-realistic to Pop, often hovering uncomfortably between categories.
This acceptance coincided with, and possibly prompted, work by artists like John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, and George Condo, who focused on portraiture and stereotypes, combining technical virtuosity with vulgarity, and caricature with idealism. While sometimes associated with "bad" painting, these later works often managed fewer "bad" elements within a more obvious structure, perhaps "bad" in anatomy but "good" in other aspects.
Albert Oehlen and "Bad Painting"
Artist Albert Oehlen has also invoked "bad painting" for exhibitions contrasting works dedicated to "bad painting" and "good painting." However, Oehlen's concern is broader, aiming to accommodate figuration and abstraction within the same work, exploring a spectrum between formal purity and extrinsic content.
Frequently Asked Questions About "Bad" Painting
What is "Bad" Painting in art history?
"Bad" Painting is a term coined by curator Marcia Tucker for a trend in American figurative painting in the 1970s. It describes works that intentionally rejected classical drawing modes and prevailing "good taste" through deformed figures, a mix of high and low art sources, and irreverent content, rather than indicating a lack of skill.
Who were the most famous artists associated with the "Bad" Painting movement?
While many artists in the original exhibition were not widely known, key figures included James Albertson, Joan Brown, Eduardo Carrillo, Neil Jenney, and William Wegman. Later artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, and Kenny Scharf are also often associated with the movement's spirit of challenging norms.
How did "Bad" Painting challenge traditional art concepts?
It challenged traditional art by discarding classical drawing, mixing art-historical and popular culture sources, and presenting humorous, sardonic, and intensely personal views. It questioned the very idea of artistic "progress" and the conventional means of valuing art, promoting an "extraordinary freedom" in artistic expression.
What are the main characteristics that distinguish "Bad" Painting from other art movements of its time?
"Bad" Painting distinguishes itself by its deliberate deformation of the figure, the ironic use of "bad" taste, and the combination of "high art" and "non-high art" (like comics) resources. Unlike Minimalism or Photo-realism, it prioritized subjective, often humorous or sarcastic, content over objective or precise representation.
What was the cultural context that led to the rise of "Bad" Painting?
The movement emerged as a challenge to the prevalent "classicizing" styles of American painting in the 1960s and 70s, particularly Minimalism and Photo-realism. It also built upon, or reacted against, earlier movements like Pop Art, Pattern and Decoration, The Hairy Who, and Funk Art, which explored the relationship between painting and print media.