Locations of Estrangement
Eithne Jordan and Colin Martin at LAF 2020
Traditional genres of observational painting—portrait, landscape, still life, interior—represented the world in order to traffic in big ideas—social hierarchy, the Sublime, Manifest Destiny, memento mori—but also to assuage the viewer with access. Paintings allowed viewers to imaginatively enter the topography of a place, to take in the atmosphere of a room, to assess the psychology of a sitter, all the better to assert some sort of control, whether real or Illusory. But what happens to painting when the world itself no …