Blackbird Rook presents
The "Estate' of Stuart Cumberland
30th July - 29th October 2024
Cumberland in the studio, 2010
I have long been an admirer of Cumberland’s painting. When we talked about his current position relative to his painting, his reference to a previous Stuart Cumberland as the author of the work suggested that there might be rich parallels to be drawn between working with Cumberland’s painting, working with an artist’s estate and questions of authorship around painting and post-conceptual painting in particular.
Handmade Colour Pictures, Approach Gallery, Installation View, 2016.
In 2016, following a one-person show at the Approach gallery in London, Stuart Cumberland put a collection of his own paintings into storage and stopped work as an artist. In making his motivations certain he then completed a PhD addressing the question, what is postconceptual painting? Reaching conclusions (in short, post-conceptual painting is fake painting) that verified his three decades of practice, he hit a target - a landmark providing solid ground and a stepping off point, a fork in the road, regarding his future. Taking his enquiries on a new tack, he currently trains in Lacanian psychoanalysis. With such an unusual mid-life shift, from artist to shrink, (the living) Cumberland now holds responsibility for his own artist’s estate. Blackbird Rook is presenting a selection of this ‘estate’.
Ingrid Pitt, 2010, Oil on Linen, 195x160cm
As an artist Cumberland started with particular emphasis on the conceptual shift ending Modernism and his work attempts to interrogate the reactionary defences of the painter. To do so he placed under scrutiny certain values applied to art and painting. For example, notions of individual expression, skill, and taste are challenged through methods that emphasise repetition and mechanical process. He aims for his work made with paint, to be seen within the broader field of contemporary art (with its attendant reference to contemporary life), rather than exist solely in relation to other so-called paintings.
Common (mis)conceptions explain art as works of beauty, and feats of imagination, originality, and exceptional hand/eye coordination rendered through painting or sculpture. However, none of these attributes are always necessary when identifying contemporary art. Cumberland asks, how can we account for such discrepancies? Conceptual Art of the 1960s clarified that the artwork is not distinguished by either: medium (painting or sculpture); or aesthetics (distinctions of taste and expert judgement). In short, both the ability of the work to embody (to be and not to represent) what it proposes, and the context this work is positioned within, have always been prime factors in elevating a thing to the status of art.
PRSSNBL2012, 2012, Oil on linen, 195 × 160 cm
‘Post-conceptual painting’ and its correlate, the ‘death of painting’ agree with the Conceptual claim. Rather than assume a material to already be ‘naturally’ art, which has been painting’s historically constructed position, contemporary artists make an argument (through the work and not supplementary to it) for the suitability of their method and medium. The death of painting does not mean artists can no longer use paint, it means for those with the goal to make artworks—and not simply to make more things—no medium (especially paint!) has privilege; all mediums (whether paint, photo or marble; shit, diamonds or gold; the human body, performance, or language) start as matter without hierarchy and must be validated by the work (object, image, or proposition).
Today, despite the historic Conceptual Art rupture and its critique of art as medium specific, painting is again abundant with a laissez-faire attitude to its assumptions of autonomy. By contrast, Cumberland’s ‘estate’ is dedicated to a rigour that speculatively answers: when does a thing become a painting, and a painting become contemporary art?
In the studio, preparing a stencil, 2010