The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago today announced The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020, an international, intergenerational group exhibition opening on November 9, 2024, and running through April 13, 2025, in the Griffin Galleries of Contemporary Art. The exhibition examines the different methods artists have used to challenge or intervene in the practice of painting and the role of painters over the past 50 years. Countering the recycled discourse that “painting is dead,” the exhibition suggests that painting remains in a constant state of renewal and rebirth.

The Living End considers the impact of various representational technologies and production methods, such as the use of video and still cameras; computers, the internet, and screens; automation; and the performing body. Comprising paintings, performance, video, and installation, the exhibition examines the ways artists working across media have challenged the mythologies of painting, ultimately changing our understanding of what constitutes a painting, how they can be produced, and who can be considered a painter. The Living End emphasizes a critical reading of painting, its tropes, its prominence in the Western canon, and its historical associations with privilege. As technology increases access to the means of production, the model of the painter as singular “genius” is being decentralized, opening abstract and representational painting to new perspectives.

The exhibition surveys the early role of computers in painting and image production, following experiments with computer-assisted graphics in the mid-1960s, and connecting to the prevalence of screens and artists mining online digital and social media culture today. The Living End also examines the cyclical relationship between still photography and painting, as well as how video has allowed artists working in performance the possibility of critiquing the trajectory and status of painting. Lastly, the exhibition looks toward the automation of painting, where the artist’s hand is largely absent, complicating the role of artist as producer and the market’s enduring interest in painting as commodity. The Living End assembles a body of work that cuts across geographies, histories, and contexts, reflecting the progression of not only technology and time, but the field of painting itself.

The Living End is curated by Jamillah James, Manilow Senior Curator, with Jack Schneider, Assistant Curator.