ABSTRACT
In the common-sense version of European art history it is said that, once photography took over the duties of verisimilitude, painters were free to explore their medium in unprecedented ways. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of books have been written exploring the aesthetic, social, economic and political rationales behind the advent of modernism in art but, suffice it to say, once painting had been freed of the job of representationalism, painting really could be about painting.
