Adrian Ghenie

Haunch of Venison, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2009

London, Haunch of Venison, Adrian Ghenie: Darkness for an Hour, 2009

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is more vibrant in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Set in an intimate, dim-lit chamber, Adrian Ghenie’s Funeral for a Modernist Painter is a complex painting portraying the artist’s creative and conceptual beliefs. This emotive painting sheds light on Ghenie’s ideas about the status of painting in contemporary art, both in reference to the past and with an interesting outlook on the future. An attractive blend of figurative and abstract forms leads the viewer to focus on the central presence of a coffin, which has been delicately designed using thin brushstrokes, starkly contrasting the overall style of the composition.

Funeral for a Modernist Painter is a prime example of Ghenie’s intriguing artistic process. Oscillating between figurative and abstract, the composition demonstrates Ghenie’s preference for what he has called ‘staged accidents’, resulting in a series of unique textures, colours and forms. In Funeral for a Modernist Painter, the sole fully recognisable element is the relatively large casket. The remainder of the scene is abstracted, a combination of marks, drips and scrapes of paint that blend the painting’s gloomy palette to create a unique, alluring texture, reminiscent of Gerhard Richter’s celebrated squeegee paintings. In Ghenie’s oeuvre, “whether in a collage or a finished painting, the palpable nature of textured surfaces is at times almost overwhelming” (Mark Gisbourne, ‘Baroque Decisions: The Influential World of Adrian Gheni’, Adrian Ghenie, Hatje Cantz Verlag: Ostfildern 2014, pp. 38-39).

The present work is evocative of the larger-format Duchamp’s Funeral I, making use of a similar prevailing dismal mood. The artist explains, “the ongoing debate about the ‘death of painting’ may be intellectually stimulating, but I think it is also anachronistic. There is enough evidence to conclude that painting is not dead. And yet, I wanted to return to the historic context in which this problem was first articulated. […] Although I recognise the liberating effects produced by the outburst of the avant-garde movements (of which I am also a beneficiary), I can’t help but notice the extent to which some of their ideas – exposed in time to manifold appropriations – have imposed themselves with such forcefulness as to become canonical” (Adrian Ghenie in conversation with Magda Radu, Flash Art, no. 269, November-December 2009, online resource). In Ghenie’s idiosyncratic manner, the man who inhabits the coffin of Duchamp’s Funeral I, Marcel Duchamp, is the artist who emphatically declared the death of painting. Meditating on the passing of ideologies and artistic revenge, Ghenie makes a reiterated attempt to exhume and subsequently re-bury these modernist beliefs in the Funeral for a Modernist Painter.

Unlike Duchamp’s Funeral I, the present painting is devoid of any visible human presence. Instead, it is primarily composed of the impersonal, shut coffin which consequently takes on a deeper meaning, becoming a symbol rather than an object that denotes Ghenie’s overall beliefs about the life of painting. Following the artist’s instructive views on the future of painting, the viewer may feel encouraged to make a choice as to whom or what should be eternally encased within.

Adrian Ghenie’s compositions have become increasingly complex over the years, both figuratively and conceptually. Turning to colour and abstraction to construct a distinctive, sombre setting, Funeral of a Modernist Painter is an excellent demonstration of the artist’s indisputable talents. Ghenie successfully translates his declaration of painting’s longevity through succinct yet emblematic imagery.