The Contemporary Line
Your painting lives after photography. The painting's relationship to the image is part of the subject.
The Contemporary Line names the painting tradition that emerges from the late twentieth century through now—a lineage aware that it lives after photography, after television, after the internet, and that the image economy the painting enters is not the one the nineteenth century entered. The lineage's organizing move is to refuse the pretense of direct observation as painting's only legitimate method. Photography is admitted as a source. Media layering—photograph of a photograph of a memory—is admitted as a subject. The painting's relationship to the image is itself part of what the painting is about.
The lineage has clear practitioners: Luc Tuymans working from small photographic sources into ghosted, subtractively-handled paintings. Peter Doig composing canvases from personal memory and photographic archive. Michaël Borremans treating staged photographic reference as the raw material of an anachronistic surface. Marlene Dumas working from photographs, pornography, newspaper images into psychologically loaded figure paintings. Jenny Saville using medical imaging and body-reference as a starting point for monumental figure work. The lineage also includes Gerhard Richter's full career—from photorealist grey paintings through squeegee abstraction—as its most influential European practitioner.
The Contemporary Line's risk is empty concept. When the photographic-reference-as-subject move becomes automatic rather than argued, the paintings become conceptual shells dressed in skillful handling. The correction is to write down, before painting, why this painting needs to exist and why it has to be a painting rather than the photograph it references. If the answer is not specific, the painting does not yet have its reason. When the answer is specific, the lineage produces the most-cited painting of the last forty years.
Acknowledge the photographic source
The lineage does not pretend its source material is direct observation when it is not. If the painting started from a photograph, the painting can say so—in its handling, in its framing, in its treatment of detail. The painting's honesty about its source is part of its ethical structure. A painter who claims the lineage while hiding photographic sourcing behind fake-observational surface handling has misunderstood the lineage's foundational move.
Write the painting's reason
Before painting begins, the Contemporary-Line painter writes a paragraph naming why this specific painting has to exist, and specifically why it has to be a painting rather than the photograph or other source it draws from. If the paragraph cannot be written, the painting is not ready. This is the lineage's discipline against empty-concept work.
Media layering as subject
A painting that refers to a photograph, which refers to a film still, which refers to a memory, is a legitimate subject in this lineage. The removes are admitted. The painting can be openly about the distance between the painted image and the remembered or photographed event that gave rise to it. This is specifically the lineage's territory; other lineages cannot do this move honestly.
Handling as argument
The way paint is applied in the Contemporary Line is a claim about the source material. Tuymans's thin, washed-out handling argues something about photographic memory. Richter's squeegee argues something about image-reproduction. Saville's loaded, physical paint argues something about bodies under medical and photographic gaze. The handling is not neutral style; it is the lineage's central argumentative instrument.
Luc Tuymans1958–
The lineage's most explicit theorist—the photographic source and the subtractive handling as a programmatic method.
Painter process →Peter Doig1959–
The personal-archive version—memory and photograph composed into landscape paintings that acknowledge their own constructedness.
Painter process →Michaël Borremans1963–
The staged-reference version—anachronistic-looking paintings built from contemporary staged photography, with the anachronism as the subject.
Painter process →Jenny Saville1970–
The body-reference version—medical imaging and photographic source extended into monumental figure work.
Painter process →Frank Auerbach1931–2024
The older bridge figure—postwar London School commitment to observed painting that nonetheless shares the Contemporary Line's refusal of clean observation.
Painter process →Lucian Freud1922–2011
The other postwar London bridge—observed painting that lives in full awareness of the media landscape it declines to participate in.
Painter process →The Empty-Concept Painting
A painter adopts the lineage's photographic-reference move as a visual strategy without arguing why this specific painting needs to exist. The result is a skillfully handled painting that carries no reason for being. The fix is the written paragraph: before painting, the painter writes why this painting has to exist and why it has to be a painting. If the paragraph is vague, the painting is not yet real.
The Hidden Photograph
A painter works from photographs while presenting the paintings as if they were directly observed. The handling pretends a freshness the source cannot support, and the paintings end up with a specific flatness viewers can feel without being able to name. The fix is honesty about the source, either in the handling (let the photographic-ness show through) or in the surrounding context (say what the source was).
Handling Without Argument
A painter adopts a lineage-adjacent handling style—washed-out Tuymans-adjacent, or Richter-adjacent blur—without the argument that produced it. The surface looks contemporary; the argument is absent. The fix is to decide what the handling is claiming before committing to it. If the handling is not making a claim, a different handling probably suits the painting better.
Collect five photographic sources that interest you enough to write a paragraph about each. The paragraphs name why each image matters, why it might become a painting, and why it has to be a painting rather than the photograph itself. Four will be rejected; one will become the week-two painting.
Paint from the chosen source, nine-by-twelve, in a handling that acknowledges the photographic origin—thin washes, muted chroma, softened edges, or any handling you can argue for in writing. Do not hide the source.
Build a media-layered composition: a painting that refers to a photograph, which refers to a film still or memory, with all three layers acknowledged. Sixteen-by-twenty. The removes are the subject.
Review the three works alongside the written paragraphs. The strongest painting will be the one where the paragraph's argument is legible in the surface. The weakest will be the one where the argument exists only in the writing. The lesson is the coupling—the Contemporary Line only works when the conceptual argument and the painted surface reinforce each other.
Your painting lives after photography. The painting's relationship to its source is part of the subject. Write the painting's reason before you paint it, and let the handling argue what the reason was.
- Ulrich Loock. Luc Tuymans, 2003. The lineage's clearest theoretical articulation—Tuymans on the photographic source, the ghost layer, and subtractive handling as argument.
- Catherine Lampert. Peter Doig: Works on Paper, 2005. Doig's archive-and-memory method documented through the preparatory drawings.
- Jenny Saville. Interview in Simon Schama's Power of Art, 2006. Saville on medical imaging, photographic reference, and the translation from source to monumental painting.
- Benjamin Buchloh. Gerhard Richter: October Files, 2009. The most comprehensive theoretical record of Richter's photographic-source career, spanning the grey paintings and the squeegee abstractions.
Last researched: 2026-04-19