"New Image" comes from a 1978 catalogue/show at the Whitney in New York. The show included Bartlett, borofsky, Moskowicz, Rothenberg and Jenney. The catalogue description gave a good picture of what was going on at that moment in the ream of painting (anything and everything):
"[the artists in the show] manipulate image on canvas so it can be experienced as: a physical object, an abstract configuration, a psychological assocation, a receptacle for applied paint, an ambiguous quasi-narrative, a specically non-specific experience, a vehicle of formalist exploration or any combination of these."
The curator of the New Image show (richard Marshall) decided that a fluctuation between abstraction and realism meant that the meaning was ambiguous.
Other art historians expanded the use of "New Image" to artists who were not in that show but painting at the same time. Wheeler says they have "little in common other than their recognizable but distinctly idiosyncratic imagery presented, for the most part, in untraditional, nonillusionistic contexts."
Roberta Smith divides New Image painters into two groups:
1. Image-color field: Africano, Moskowitz, Rothenberg (silhouette/shape against monochrome background, simplicity/awkwardness and personal symbolism)
2. Conceptual: Bartlett, Jenney, Zucker (have dissected and reassembled painting. each aspect gets conceptual point).
David Salle has some artists and critics in a flap over whether his works objectify women or not. Even women disagree over whether this is occurring in Salle's work. His work is conceptual and complex and he has used a range of styles. The images included are often appropriated from photographs or other sources (such as design history), the idea is that all appropriated images take on a new meaning in the painting medium (b/c painting was under attack periodically with the idea that photography was "more relevant" as a medium of expression.. and "more important" as a NEW medium). Salle is influenced by Rauschenberg, Rosenquist and Johns (sometimes borrowing images from their work).
Salle, importantly, is "cross-referencing" images... he reuses them with NO STORY LINE and NO NARRATIVE (even idea of "anti-narrative" from Renaissance/Mannerist period of art history).
There is a debate, therefore, about ORIGINALITY with Salle... he believes that originality is most important and exists OUTSIDE of personal style.
Appropriates images that interest him in a subjective way. Does not claim to comment on painting or pop culture but do see elements of pop culture. His appropriation of pornography is important for personal meanings (which he does not reveal) and are not (he says) a comment on society.
He uses camera to take own photos of models. Also interested in movies (for the MOOD of scenes more than imagery).
Critiques: incoherence? puzzle to be solved? tease? Random play of signifiers? compare to channel surfing?
Fragments-unfixed-open to interpretation = Postmodern.
Elizabeth Murray, b. 1940, attended the Art Institute of Chicago and received MFA from Mills City in 1964. Her work appealed to nearly all of the groups at the time. From 1976 onward uses shaped canvases, unusual, irregular shapes to futher the idea of multiple canvases, sometimes overlapping/interlocking, sometimes in patterns like jigsaw puzzles in which the pieces do not quite fit.
"I want the panels to look as though they've been thrown against the wall and stuck there."
Her work seems spontaneous but is carefully planned (with full-scale preparatory drawings)
Her paintings LOOK abstract at first but contain figurative elements. Aimes to be "expressive in paint" and puts "heart and soul" into her work.
Jennier Bartlett has formulas for her paintings, based on a number of different elements:
(a) figural motifs (tree, house, mountains ocean)
(b) abstract elements (square, circle triangle)
(c) three sizes (small, medium, large).
(d) lines: horizontal, vertical, curved, diagonal (different colors and lengths)
(e) 3 ways to mark a 2D surface (dotted, freehand or measured)
Uses the grid (cf. Sol Lewitt, minimal motifs through a sense of permutation)
In "most developed" phase combines painting and sculptural elements to break down the barrier between the painting and the audience by incorporating 3D elements which extend the space of the painting into "real" space of gallery.