Laura Owens’s painting Untitled (2016) hangs on the wall in “Fine Young Cannibals,” a summer show at Petzel Gallery in New York. I had sauntered over here, swimming in the heat in Chelsea; it reminded me of Chandigarh, without the consideration of those makeshift awnings. Somewhere along the way, writing this essay, looking at JPGs of paintings and photographs in a folder on my desktop called “Digital Art,” I’d lost track of my argument; I had to see the Owens to be reminded of the physical grain of paint.

In the gallery, my friend Theodore Barrow stands there, akimbo, unfettered by the swampy weather. He’s a specialist in 19th-century art history, and he asks me to explain what we’re looking at. What real difference is there between these paintings, which are held up as indicative of a “digital” turn in painting, and Robert Rauschenberg’s weddings of paint and preexisting materials in the 1950s? Read More