Bois, Yve-Alain. Painting as Model

Bois, Yve-Alain. Painting as Model. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990.

An attempt to develop an art theory which, in the phenomenological sense, will be explained in its own terms, that is, which does not require concepts, explanatory models, or a language borrowed from outside, from non-pictorial spheres. A use of formalist theory for this attempt. Materiality and technique of painting as a key to understanding of its meanings. He starts by exploring what social and political forces try to position art scholars in their tenets; he then explicitly pronounces his political position in order to identify his research agenda.

The essay “Painting as Model” starts with Bois asking “what does it mean for a painter to think” (245) – that is, how can one think in painting and could painting be a separate theoretical practice.  The agenda is “above all to rid ourselves of the stifling concept of image upon which the relation of this kind of text to art is founded – arrogant, ignorant, predatory texts that consider painting a collection of images to be tracked down, illustrations to be captioned.” (246) He follows Hubert Damisch to criticise Sartre for his thesis of non-existence of ‘aesthetic perception’—Sartre argues that artistic forms exist only in the consciousness of people who observe them, but as Bois argues this is true only for ‘realist’ painting, which occupies a certain historical period, but is certainly not universal. A focus should be switched from forms to the texture. The model of understanding works of art should, therefore, be “technical,” arguing that the epistemology of painting lies exactly in technique, at the “elementary level of the gesture” (250).