Live painting

also: Live event painting

technique c. 1950s-present France United States

Live painting is a form of visual performance art in which an artist completes a work in public, often at a bar, concert, wedding or festival and usually to a DJ or live band; the piece may be planned or improvised. It stands in deliberate contrast to the artist's slower studio practice. The French painter Georges Mathieu staged timed painting performances from 1954 - most famously a 4-by-12-metre canvas made with some 800 tubes of paint before about 2,000 people at Paris's Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt in 1956 - anticipating happenings and performance art. LeRoy Neiman painted during the 1976 Summer Olympics, and from the 1990s live painting became a hallmark of street art and graffiti events, with teams and sometimes spectators joining in.

Live Painting by Beo Beyond at Shôko Club in Barcelona. He painted with fluorescent colors which glow under black light.
Live Painting by Beo Beyond at Shôko Club in Barcelona. He painted with fluorescent colors which glow under black light.CC BY 3.0 (credit: Beo Beyond) · source

Defining characteristics

  • The making is the spectacle: the audience watches the canvas emerge
  • Rapid, confident brushwork and improvisational marks built at speed
  • Loose, exposed process and unfinished edges over studio polish
  • Fluorescent or high-contrast colors suited to clubs, stages and night events
  • The event setting - music, crowd, venue - absorbed into the finished work
  • One-off performances rather than works planned in advance

Key figures

  • Georges Mathieu (1921-2012) — Pioneer of timed public painting performances from 1954, painted live on stage and on television
  • LeRoy Neiman (1921-2012) — Painted live at sporting spectacles including the 1976 Summer Olympics

Example works

  • Hommage aux poètes du monde entier — Georges Mathieu (1956)
  • La Bataille de Hastings — Georges Mathieu (1956)

Sources

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