A New Spirit Then, A New Spirit Now, 1981-2018 Curated by Norman Rosenthal

Almine Rech Gallery is pleased to present A New Spirit Then, A New Spirit Now, 1981-2018. Curated by Norman Rosenthal, this exhibition reconstructs and reinterprets A New Spirit in Painting, a seminal presentation of 20th-century painting at the Royal Academy of Arts in London co-curated by Rosenthal with Christos Joachimides and Nicholas Serota in 1981.

The original exhibition embraced painting’s capacity for representation, playfulness, and experimentation, showcasing several generations of artists who largely operated outside the New York art world’s sphere of influence. With A New Spirit Then, A New Spirit Now, 1981 - 2018, Rosenthal revisits this conversation in a contemporary setting, featuring works by artists included in his original presentation, with the addition of Maria Lassnig.

In the early 1980s, the relevance of painting was in question. Internationally, newer mediums such as photography, video, and installation dominated the art scene. Moreover, the critical establishment — centralized in New York during the postwar years — had endowed painting with a certain sense of orthodoxy that was hard to shake. Works that expressed a personal or political viewpoint through figuration were considered to be retrograde in comparison to the radical abstractions created by the great American painters of the forties and fifties. The establishment asserted that the New York school of Abstract Expressionism was the rightful successor to European art movements such as Cubism and Surrealism, and the progenitor of the distinctly American movements of Pop and Minimalism. Paintings that fell outside this narrow lineage, in content and geography, were largely ignored.

A New Spirit in Painting set out to survey an alternate history of painting in order to assess the current state of the medium, drawing over 150 works from both established and emerging artists. The show presented three distinct generations of painters, the first being artists who rose to international prominence in the 1960s, such as Lucian Freud, Frank Stella, and Cy Twombly. A New Spirit in Painting also featured members of an older generation, including Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, and Pablo Picasso, presenting works that challenged standard notions of these artists’ oeuvres. Perhaps most consequently, the exhibition introduced a vibrant set of young German and Italian painters to the international stage, including Francesco Clemente, and Gerhard Richter — all of whom were working in relative obscurity. Transcending generational and national identity, the artists included in the exhibition uniformly imbued their work with emotion, narrative, and personality — qualities that had long been undervalued in the contemporary art scene. In embracing stylistic pluralism and individual eccentricity, A New Spirit in Painting primed the art world’s renewed interest in the medium.

In A New Spirit Then, A New Spirit Now, 1981 - 2018, Rosenthal reassesses this defining moment in his curatorial career with nearly 40 years of hindsight. The original show challenged painting’s status as a ‘conservative’ medium by presenting a self-aware relationship between the artist, painted image, and reality. Rosenthal pushes this investigation even further in his new presentation, questioning the role of personal and collective memory in our conception of this moment. The majority of the artists presented
in the exhibition are living and working today. A New Spirit Then, A New Spirit Now, 1981 - 2018, is staged across two of Almine Rech Gallery’s spaces, and features artists who were included in the seminal 1981 exhibition at the Royal Academy. In New York, the exhibition presented historical paintings from the 1980s. In London, the exhibition expands with works made by the same artists after the year 2000.

List of exhibited artists:

Frank AUERBACH
Georg BASELITZ
Francesco CLEMENTE
Rainer FETTING
Howard HODGKIN
Per KIRKEBY
Maria LASSNIG
Markus LÜPERTZ
Malcolm MORLEY
A.R. PENCK
Pablo PICASSO
Susan ROTHENBERG
David SALLE
Julian SCHNABEL

「一种新的精神：过去与现在，1981-2018」

策展人：诺曼·罗森塔尔（Norman Rosenthal）

2018年10月2日—11月17日

伦敦

阿尔敏·莱希画廊十分荣幸地宣布将在其伦敦空间举办展览「一种新的精神：过去与现在，1981-2018」。英国策展人兼艺术史学家诺曼·罗森塔尔（Norman Rosenthal）将重新诠释1981年他在英国皇家学院，与前英国泰特美术馆总馆长尼古拉斯·塞罗塔（Nicholas Serota），及德国策展人克里斯多斯·约奇米德斯（Christos Joachimides）联合策划的重要展览——「绘画的新精神」。当年的展览梳理了20世纪绘画的发展历程，是现当代艺术史上极具开创性的一次呈现。

1981年的展览彰显了绘画的表现力、趣味性以及实验性，参展的艺术家均不在纽约生活、工作。如今，通过展览「一种新的精神：过去与现在，1981-2018」，策展人罗森塔尔重新审视这一话题，并将其带入了当代语境之中。除了玛丽亚·拉斯妮格（Maria Lassnig）以外，此次展出的艺术家均参与了1981年的展览。

上世纪80年代初，绘画与当代社会的相关性受到质疑。 在国际上，摄影、录像和装置等新兴媒介主宰了当时的艺术界。此外，战后以纽约为中心的艺术语境赋予了绘画一种难以撼动的正统感。与四、五十年代之间“伟大的美国画家”所创作的激进的抽象绘画相比，在这一时期通过具象来表达个人或政治观点的作品被认为是一种倒退。他们声称：纽约抽象表现主义画派（Abstract Expressionism）是如立体主义（Cubism）和超现实主义（Surrealism）等欧洲艺术运动的正统继承者，并且引导了美国的波普艺术（Pop）和极简主义（Minimalism）运动。无论从内容上还是地域上，当时落在这个“狭隘的艺术血统”之外的绘画实践都因此被忽略和轻视。

展览「绘画的新精神」呈现了绘画的另一种历史，囊括了当时的成熟和新兴艺术家们的逾150件作品。展览展示了三代不同的画家：六十年代首先享誉国际的艺术家，如卢西安·弗洛伊德（Lucian Freud）、弗兰克·斯特拉（Frank Stella）、以及赛·托姆布雷（Cy Twombly）等；老一辈的艺术家：包括弗兰西斯·培根（Francis Bacon）、威廉·德·库宁（Willem de Kooning），以及巴勃罗·毕加索（Pablo Picasso）等，而展出的又都是这些艺术家鲜为人知的创作；最重要的是，这个展览将一批年轻的德国和意大利画家带入了国际视野，其中包括弗朗西斯·科克莱门特（Francesco Clemente）和格哈德·里希特（Gerhard Richter）等——在此之前，他们都是默默无闻地进行创作的艺术家。此次展览中的作品跨越了年代和国籍的界限，展示了强烈的情感、叙事性以及艺术家的个人性格——这些都是在当时的艺术界被低估的品质。展览「绘画的新精神」包容了多元化的风格及个人主义，重燃了艺术界对于绘画这一媒介的兴趣。

在「一种新的精神：过去与现在，1981-2018」中，策展人罗森塔尔在近 40 年后，重新审视这个在其策展生涯中具有关键意义的展览。他在艺术家、绘画意象和现实之间呈现出的自我意识的关系中，挑战了绘画作为“传统”艺术媒介的地位。在新展中，他对于这一理念做出了进一步的推进：个人和集体记忆在我们对当下的感知中起到了怎样的作用？展览中所展出的大多数艺术家直至今日仍在不断的创作中。「一种新的精神：过去与现在，1981-2018」将会在阿尔敏·莱希画廊的两个空间中展出：在纽约的展览展示从20世纪80年代开始的历史性绘画，而伦敦空间的展览则将展出同一批艺术家于2000年之后的创作。

参展艺术家名单

弗兰克·奥尔巴赫（Frank AUERBACH）

乔治·巴塞利玆（Georg BASELITZ）

弗朗切斯科·克莱门特（Francesco CLEMENTE）

赖纳·费廷（Rainer FETTING）

佩尔·柯克比（Per KIRKEBY）

玛丽亚·拉斯妮赫（Maria LASSNIG）

马库斯·吕佩尔兹（Markus LÜPERTZ）

马尔科姆·莫利（Malcolm MORLEY）

AR·彭克（A.R. PENCK）

巴勃罗·毕加索（Pablo PICASSO）

苏珊·罗滕堡（Susan ROTHENBERG）

大卫·萨尔（David SALLE）

朱利安·施纳贝尔（Julian SCHNABEL）