The suspension of time in painting

May 30, 2005 (Monday) - The Suspension of Time in Painting
Aaron M. Brown, a professor of painting at Emporia State University in Kansas.

When dealing with representational (particularly photo-based) painting, the question is often posed, "why paint, when you have the photograph?" This question assumes that there is no fundamental difference between the painted image and the photographic image, or that the painter has failed to provide one. I used to get this question a lot in grad school. It infuriated me, partly because it felt like a glib sort of attack, and partly because I didn't know how to answer the question. Merely citing the love of the painting process didn't seem adequate, because the viewer doesn't necessarily care about such things. Why do I value a painting as a representational object in the first place?

I'm still not certain of the answer, but I have a theory, which has to do with the suspension of time. The element of time is always present in art, more overtly so in a representational image. Different mediums hold and convey the idea of time in different ways. In film and video, visual events are played out over time, and the viewer reconstructs the events into a meaningful assemblage according to the narrative, and/or other culturally inherited factors. The experience is entirely dependent on exposition, whether the narrative is abstract, rational or absurd. That's why we are usually expected to sit through entire videos, and time may become our enemy.

In photography, time is arrested, or frozen--there is the sense of events occurring before and after the photograph was taken, so that the image seems to exist relative to a linear timeline. Any studio manipulation of the image merely extends the timeline, adding more fact or fiction after the original fact. As an object, the photograph has no physical quality that will break the chain of its own veracity.

A painting, on the other hand, seems to exist in a timeless state, or a state of suspension. Any good painting has this quality, regardless of the historical baggage attached to its creation. A painting is a numinous object. I believe this is part of the reason why we continue to value painting, despite continued attempts to assassinate the medium, or torque it out of existence. But where does this untimely quality come from?

I think the answer may lie in the surface of the painting, and the manner in which a painting is constructed. The "traditional" method of painterly construction is an elaboration of childhood intuition: the act of applying pigment to a surface. The painted image is built layer upon layer; all paintings share this common materiality. The layers of pigment are stratified, literally rising above the picture plane, forming a subtle (to the human eye) topographical map. In essence, therefore, a painting is three-dimensional.

This has the effect of enabling the viewer to read a two dimensional image along the z-axis (the axis of depth, as when viewing a three dimensional object). Think of the well known anaology of a painting as a window; the viewer can see into the surface of a painting. When the viewer's gaze is directed inward, as into a painting, all sense of time is forgotten, and a suspension occurs. When time is suspended, it loses its literal meaning, and takes on numinous value.

By contrast, when I look at a photograph, my inward-bound vision is deflected, due to the absolute flatness of the photographic surface. I can scan a photograph and apprehend the image in time, but I can't travel into it--my gaze skips off like a stone on water. I'm convinced that this is why I value photography, but not the photograph--when I look at a photograph as an object, particularly an art object, I'm instantly bored and alienated. There's no surface to sink my eyes into.

The surface of a painting is therefore all-important, and must be experienced in the flesh, not merely in reproduction. The surface depth of a painting may seem minimal (and hence superficial) to lovers of the "real", but consider the surface of the earth. In truth, the metaphysical expansiveness of a painting is a direct result of its physicality.