Painting Now doesn’t represent painting now. Thank goodness

The death of painting has been so often foretold — almost as frequently as its renaissance — that any such prediction today is nothing short of foolhardy. Of course, painting is alive and well and living in London, but you wouldn’t know that from the current exhibition of five artists at Tate Millbank. (By the way, this is a paying display, the regular admission fee being £10. Not surprisingly, it was deserted when I visited. This sort of show, to do its job properly and communicate to the public at large, should be free.) According to the press release, each of the five artists ‘has adopted an approach to painting that both exploits and subverts its conventions’. I wish. The exhibition is dull with obviousness and an almost total lack of real painterly experimentation. It begins with Tomma Abts, born in 1967 and a past winner of the Turner Prize, if that is supposed to be any mark of distinction.