buckner: Another Postmodern Groan

Here is Peter Schjeldahl discussing the retrospective of Marlene Dumas’ work at the Museum of Modern Art in the recent issue of the New Yorker (the same magazine that published the Harold Rosenberg quote below):

Dumas matters as one of a number of now middle-age painters who dealt with the apparent dead end of painting after modernism.

When asked about the death of painting Rosenberg said he was sure if someone took the trouble to become a great painter no one would object. No doubt David Hockney, Wayne Thiebaud, Chuck Close, Lucien Freud, and Robert Ryman among others would be surprised to learn that painting had reached a dead end.