BEERS London presents Painting, Smoking, Eating at Saatchi Gallery, an exhibition co-curated by Andrew Salgado that takes its title from a Philip Guston painting. The exhibition consists of 13 internationally-based artists whose work here considers (rather plainly stated) paintings about painting.
For centuries, artists have obsessed over the tangential, self-reflexive aspects relating to the joys and burdens of their craft. From Velázquez’s self-reflexive Las Meninas to Modernist iterations like Matisse’s Red Studio to Norman Rockwell’s Triple Self-Portrait or more contemporary examples like the works of Dana Schutz or Jonas Wood, the painter’s obsession with the act of painting itself has become among the most ubiquitous and prevalent of subject matters.
Perhaps the artist’s anxiety-laden process lends itself so readily to such reflective analysis. The notion that great art requires both sacrifice and artifice, combined with the persistent myth of the creative genius is an increasingly recurrent theme.
True, the artist’s journey is one of obsess and dedication, but the included artists here dismantle this mythology with works that are wryly self-aware. Considering the artist’s environment and respective bric-a-brac depicted here, we might ask ourselves why artists are so keen to depict themselves as incomplete, in states of partiality? It can be assumed that the artistic journey is one of consistent re-examination, and therefore these depictions of artist as outsider might be the most logical means to express this sentiment. Often, the artist’s world is depicted alongside food, alcohol, and cigarettes as measures of vice, indulgence and excess. While these works are certain not to answer any of the greater historic or histrionic questions surrounding art and its production or depiction, we are offered a satirical snapshot of the artist’s pursuit.
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