The first in a series which explores the condition of painting now. The cultural landscape in which painting is made and received has changed greatly in the last twenty-five years. What is painting today? Is it an important and vivid medium or a redundant object of nostalgic connoisseurship? How do current practices relate to painting’s history? Is painting central or peripheral to current art practice? These and other questions will be discussed by major international artists, theorists, historians and critics. Art historian Michael Fried, the J.R. Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, launches the series. His books include Absorption and Theatricality, Manet’s Modernism, and Art and Objecthood.
