Painting anticipates cultural shifts because its production costs are lowest

Evidence

The origins of the notion of postmodernism were literary, and its projection to fame as a style was architectural. But long before there were novels or buildings that answered to standard descriptions of the postmodern, virtually all its traits had surfaced in painting. Since the Belle Epoque, this had usually been the most sensitive seismograph of wider cultural changes. For painting is set apart among the arts by a distinctive combination of features, that amount to a special statute. On the one hand, in the scale of resources required as a practice, its costs of production are far the lowest (even sculptors use more expensive materials) — a mere minimum of paint and canvas, within reach of the most indigent producer. By comparison, the capital sums needed for architecture or film are enormous, while writing or composing normally demands quite sizeable outlays to reach publication or performance. Another way of putting this is simply to note that the painter is in principle the only fully independent producer, who as a rule needs no further intermediation to realize a work of art. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 240

Categorization

• XREF: A materialist explanation of art-forms’ temporal lag — connects to economic determinism debates in cultural theory and to Adorno/Benjamin on the autonomy of art. — connects to: Painting’s low formal barriers made it modernism’s pioneer — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 242
• SEED: Angle: ‘The cheapest medium leads’ — a theory of why painting is the avant-garde laboratory and what that predicts for digital art, where production costs approach zero.

Broader Connections

• Painting’s low formal barriers made it modernism’s pioneer #corroborates (0.85) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 242