Minor matters of major importance:1 On the vicissitudes of minor painting

Abstract

This introductory editorial surveys a range of minor painting practices. It considers how minor painting might be defined, not in order to fix its designation, but to assess its implications, especially in relation to institutional authority, art’s historicity, art education and the authorial subject. There are discussions of Jim Shaw, Henry Darger, contributors to the current issue and others. These lead on to questions about art education. Rather than propose resolutions, the text instead traces the frictions between minor painting and institutional renderings of art education. The text emphasizes the ultimate inability of minor painting to escape or resist the institutional framing of painting. In reading Deleuze and Guattari’s Minor Literature book, the voice of community, rather than the individual subject, becomes important. Taking up the figure of community, the essay ends by placing the painter Norman Lewis in relation to a minor intervention within the milieu of Abstract Expressionism.