I was surprised to note that the publicity for Oehlen’s new London exhibition revives the notion. Oehlen, we are told, champions “self-consciously amateurish ‘bad’ painting, infusing spontaneous and expressive gestures with surrealist attitude”. I assumed he would have moved on from that posture in the early 1980s, after “bad painting”, which was briefly a much-publicised – and much-derided – phenomenon, seemed to vanish without trace.
“The term always fascinated me,” Oehlen says. “Over the years, I thought, what happened to that? Because I liked the contradiction of the idea. So I thought I might produce more examples of it myself.” But is it even possible to do a “bad painting” now? Who would decide what bad painting is, when any sense of a standard in art has become even more diffuse than it was when Oehlen started doing bad paintings in the 1980s?
“Maybe bad painting could mean being against the rules. That’s a cause I would sign up to right away. We think now there are no rules in art. But still too many people, artists and audiences, believe in them.” But what are the rules in art today? “I can’t put it into words. But you feel it all the time.”
The recent upsurge in identity-driven art has given rise to an odd sort of cosiness, whereby if an artist’s work ticks the right boxes, it will be accepted. With this has come a revival in narrative painting, much of it twee, and a world away from Oehlen’s work. Among the paintings in the Gagosian show are several featuring discernible trees and sky, inspired by a film he has made on Van Gogh, for which he created the paintings – though his approach wasn’t conventional. “I was aware when I was painting them that these paintings were totally worthless. So I was able to ignore the possibility of making ‘art’. And that’s a fortunate situation to be in. The work gets looser, fresher. Some of these paintings are total crap. But who cares? They could be the source of a good painting.”
‘Albert Oehlen: New Paintings’ is at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, London W1, until May 11. Info: gagosian.com
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