In the 19th century any painting made in Europe could be neatly if generally described as serving an active purpose of supplying a view of something else. Whether landscape, portrait, ballet dancers, flowers, drinkers sitting at a bar or table.

Just looking through my Coolest Artists folder — 1793 artist sub-folders so far, nearly 15,000 images, primarily paintings — I see paintings serving an active purpose of supplying examples of retired (inactive, ironic, taxidermied, pantomimed) purposes.

Diagram

Map

Botanical and/or Zoological Illustration

Dream Imagery

Cards for Unknown Games or Occult Use

Game Board

Diary Entry

Political Cartoon

Wish Fulfillment

I also see active-purpose imagery in the form of portraits, fan art, abstraction in a great variety of forms some using objective imagery, pure experimentation. Much of the contemporary active-purpose imagery dances with irony, either through style or subject matter or obvious deployment of cliche or nostalgia.

All the contemporary work seems one way or another to be locked in orbit around Modernism. I’m not sure how painting could escape this fate, yet I want to continue believing it’s possible. Maybe this is a problem for me.

All the time I work I wonder what it is I’m really doing.