Lost in translation | 13 October 2007

Any show that sets out to be definitive encourages brickbats and controversy. When Charles Baudelaire called in 1863 for a painter of modern life, he was seeking the kind of artist who would do justice to the realities of contemporary existence rather than escape them as was the habit of the French Salon painters of the time. Eventually he lit upon the elegant though minor graphic talent of Constantin Guys (1805–92), unable to appreciate the towering genius of Manet who in fact precisely exemplified the painter he was looking for. Such is the short-sightedness of even the greatest critics. Now the American director of the Hayward, Ralph Rugoff, has laid his own cards on the table in an exhibition that attempts to identify the sort of painting which he thinks best expresses modern life today. The result is an exhibition of unparalleled dullness.

In fact, Rugoff’s choice explores the past 50 years from the point of view of painting that has its origin in photography. Here is his thesis­ — that the relationship between art and photography lies at the heart of what painting does or attempts to do today. He states that his show features ‘many of the most significant artists in the recent history of painting’. Quite a claim for such a dreary collection. Does ‘significant’ equal ‘boring’ as the satirists have so frequently led us to believe? Certainly there are some fantastic bores among the 22 artists represented here. The whole of the Hayward, upstairs and down, is given over to a hundred of their paintings, often very large, though for variation there are some of Elizabeth Peyton’s tiny canvases dotted about. Rarely have I been so depressed by an exhibition.

It’s the overall effect of the show which is depressing, rather than the individual paintings. And this is because it takes a tendency of art and makes it the mainstream: it presents photographically-inspired art without any of the other kinds of painting which were (and are) taking place concurrently.