The yumminess of paint

‘Painting has always been dead,’ Willem de Kooning once mused. ‘But I was never worried about it.’ The exhibition Mixing It Up: Painting Today at the Hayward Gallery is crammed with work by 31 artists who likewise don’t allow the allegedly moribund state of their medium to keep them away from pigments and palette.

This is well worth a visit, not only to see such good things as ‘Hold the Right Rail’ by the 87-year-old Rose Wylie, containing a patch of yellow curtain that somehow holds the eye and stays in the memory; the kind of magic that paint can work like nothing else. Elsewhere there is plenty of evidence on show of ebullient pleasure in the material itself, whether thick or thin, loose and free or applied with a delicate touch.

Mixing It Up also provides a handy introduction to various star exponents of the easel and brush who have risen in recent years. Oscar Murillo is one of these: prominent enough to have been shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2019 (and would perhaps have been the winner had all the contestants not asked for the award to be given jointly). He works in other ways, including sculpture and video, but at the Hayward Murillo shows a series of huge pictures — all entitled ‘manifestation’ (2019–20) — which pack a considerable punch. These have the feeling of shimmering water you get in Gerhard Richter’s abstracts, but in a much harsher, messier manner. There is a suggestion of black, beating wings, wreckage, chaos. In early autumn 2021, they have a rather timely feel.

Mixing It Up, however, makes few claims to have caught the zeitgeist. As the title jokily implies, it is a bit of a jumble, containing a sprinkling of fabulous things and quite a few others suggestive of the village art show.