The Open University
Yorkshire Region

Cultural Studies Research Forum
Reports and Abstracts 1995 -2000

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Eating and being eaten: the studio painting and the museum painting

Mike Belshaw

This paper is concerned with a painting by Jasper Johns called Zone. I will refer to this work first as a 'studio painting' insofar as it takes the artist's studio as its theme. Some comparisons will be made between Zone and other studio paintings, notably Cezanne's Still Life with Plaster Cupid and Matisse's Nasturtiums and the Dance. Such works can be thought to fall between the genres of (self) portrait and still life and to that extent can be understood as a kind of autobiography. However, an autobiography of the artist, whether as a professional figure or as a person, will give way to the notation of the autobiography of painting. This possibility depends on the studio painting as meta-painting.

The museum painting - understood at first to be a painting of the inside of a museum - is also an instance of meta-painting. But just as the term 'studio painting' can denote a painting done in, rather than of, a studio, so the term 'museum painting' can denote a painting done for a museum. I will pursue the ready-made blank canvas as the exemplary museum painting before discussing Zone as an assemblage of studio objects, which find its precedents in Cezanne and Matisse as well as in Duchamp.

A recurring theme and conclusion will be that the spectator of Zone is caught between the imaginary realm evoked by the autonomous work of art and the confrontation with a literal object.