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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Is painting dead?

Mar­sha Pearce ru­mi­nates on Rex Dixon's lat­est works

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20131208

In Rex Dixon's lat­est ex­hi­bi­tion, The Death of Paint­ing: Re­turn­ing Paint­ing to its Essence, he ques­tions the demise of the prac­tice of us­ing brush and pig­ments and in­sists that paint­ing is still a jus­ti­fi­able means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

"I am not say­ing paint­ing is dead, but I am ex­plor­ing what you can do with it as far as com­mu­ni­ca­tion, when you think of what ad­ver­tis­ing does, or what videos, films and per­for­mance art do. Paint­ing is com­pet­ing with all of these things," said Dixon.

Dixon is not the first per­son to con­sid­er the col­lapse of paint­ing. The 19th cen­tu­ry French painter Paul De­laroche is be­lieved to have de­clared the death of paint­ing when he saw ear­ly tech­no­log­i­cal in­ven­tions in pho­tog­ra­phy. In 1921 five Russ­ian avant-garde artists said farewell to paint­ing, pro­nounc­ing the prac­tice ob­so­lete in the con­text of their so­ci­ety. In re­sponse to the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion and the civ­il war be­tween Bol­she­vik and an­ti-Bol­she­vik fac­tions, the artists sought cre­ative forms that would be prac­ti­cal and use­ful to every­day life. Artists like Alek­san­dr Rod­chenko, there­fore, turned to graph­ic de­sign and pho­tog­ra­phy.

In lat­er years, paint­ing would come un­der threat of ter­mi­na­tion again. The rise of con­cep­tu­al art in the 1960s in both Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca, came with less paint­ed im­ages as ideas took prece­dence over aes­thet­ic fac­tors and the form of the fin­ished work.

"Paint­ing was seen at that time as an old-fash­ioned way of work­ing," Dixon said. It is against the back­ground of con­cep­tu­al­ism that Dixon would con­front paint­ing's rel­e­vance in his fine arts bach­e­lor's de­gree the­sis en­ti­tled The Death of Paint­ing, which he com­plet­ed in 1971 at the Stour­bridge Col­lege of Art in West Mid­lands, Eng­land.

Over his 40-year ca­reer as an artist, Dixon has re­mained fo­cused on the va­lid­i­ty of paint­ing. He has taught in the paint­ing de­part­ments at the New Uni­ver­si­ty of Ul­ster in Belfast, North­ern Ire­land and at the Ed­na Man­ley School of Vi­su­al Arts in Ja­maica. He has al­so ex­hib­it­ed his work both re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

In our present-day con­text, Dixon's con­cern about the po­ten­cy of paint­ing is still the sub­ject of much dis­cus­sion. For ex­am­ple, art crit­ic Jed Perl writes in his re­cent ar­ti­cle The Rec­tan­gu­lar Can­vas is Dead: "Paint­ing, which for cen­turies reigned supreme among the vi­su­al arts, has fall­en from grace [...]. Which is not to say that paint­ing is dead, or dy­ing, or even in eclipse: ex­cel­lent paint­ings have been done in the last few years [...].

"But the painter's ba­sic chal­lenge, the ma­nip­u­la­tion of colours and forms and metaphors on the flat plane with its al­most in­evitably rec­tan­gu­lar shape, is no longer gen­er­al­ly seen as art's al­pha and omega, as the pri­ma­ry place in the vi­su­al arts where mean­ing and mys­tery are be­lieved to come to­geth­er."

It is pre­cise­ly this ba­sic chal­lenge of the painter that Dixon takes up in his new body of work. He presents us with his evolved style, one that has moved from a large­ly ges­tur­al ap­proach to the con­sid­er­a­tion and in­cor­po­ra­tion of strong geo­met­ric shapes: rec­tan­gles, tri­an­gles, di­a­monds and par­al­lel­o­grams. His new paint­ings are a mix of chance–let­ting the paint do what it wants–with more con­trolled treat­ments of the sur­face of the can­vas in a tech­nique that demon­strates his ma­nip­u­la­tion of form to pro­duce works with vary­ing de­grees of spa­tial depth.

In a num­ber of his pieces, dark tri­an­gles can be in­ter­pret­ed as deep open­ings in­to which we can fall. He desta­bilis­es the two-di­men­sion­al sur­face so that in many in­stances it los­es it flat­ness.

"All of the paint­ings are about space in the pic­ture plane. I think I am play­ing with sur­face and depth," Dixon said.

He al­so en­gi­neers colour place­ment in this se­ries of paint­ings so that we get the ef­fect of si­mul­ta­ne­ous con­trast, that is, he po­si­tions colours side by side so that they in­ter­act and af­fect the val­ue and in­ten­si­ty of each oth­er. In his mas­ter­mind­ing of form and colour he skill­ful­ly shows paint­ing's com­mu­nica­tive pow­er.

He clev­er­ly ex­press­es the tran­si­tion from dawn to dusk in the piece Morn­ing Noon and Night, he con­veys the ki­net­ic en­er­gy, the rise and crash of wa­ter in the paint­ing Break­ing Wave, and he ar­tic­u­lates a sil­hou­et­ted palm tree in the trop­i­cal heat with­out stereo­typ­i­cal pic­turesque­ness in his piece called Palm.

While his paint­ings are cre­at­ed in an eco­nom­i­cal, al­most min­i­mal­ist man­ner, they speak vol­umes. Im­ages of chevrons and par­al­lel lines in his art call to mind road signs: pedes­tri­an cross­walks and traf­fic sym­bols among oth­ers, which do the work of com­mu­ni­cat­ing in­for­ma­tion to us. Seem­ing to draw on those signs, Dixon il­lus­trates the ca­pac­i­ty of paint­ing to re­lay da­ta and to be full of mean­ing. It is this essence to which he re­turns in this ex­hi­bi­tion.

To­day, amid the pletho­ra of com­put­er art and oth­er forms of ex­pres­sion, Rex Dixon is do­ing his part to en­sure that paint­ing has a heart­beat. Paint­ing is not dead, and Dixon con­tin­ues to draw breathe from its ex­is­tence and pos­si­bil­i­ties.

"I main­tain paint­ing as an ac­tiv­i­ty, and I keep my­self alive in it by chang­ing my style a lot," he said.

The Death of Paint­ing opened on No­vem­ber 22 at Soft Box Gallery, 9 Al­cazar Street, St Clair, and con­tin­ues un­til De­cem­ber 21. Gallery hours: Mon-Fri 10 am-6 pm, and Sat 10 am-2 pm.

Call: 622-8610 or e-mail: soft­box­gallery@gmail.com

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