The Productive Inadequacy of Image for Contemporary Painting Image Based Operations in the Work of Beth Harland, Jacqueline Humphries and R.H. Quaytman

This article considers the productive inadequacy of image for contemporary painting. The mutability of image is tested against the material, spatial and durational conditions of painting, and the attentional attachments it might mobilize through an examination of the working methods of Beth Harland, Jacqueline Humphries and R.H.Quaytman. Painting is not positioned as image, but as a processor of image information, able to prompt an image response, A resistance to image is framed by the art historical and philosophical legacy of image expectations and preclusions that each artist feels compelled to work against, and the expanding opticality of our contemporary social, cultural and economic interactions.