The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century
Monday 21 November 2016 1 - 2pm
The Reynolds Room, Burlington House, Royal Academy of Arts
Free, booking required.
Painter and writer Timothy Hyman RA and curator Roger Malbert discuss the artists who have chosen to pursue figurative painting over the last century.
In the 20th century, with the arrival of abstraction and movements such as Abstract Expressionism, people began to see figurative painting as outdated and at odds with the very concept of modern art. Timothy Hyman talks to Roger Malbert about his new book The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century, which highlights a range of Modernists who, despite their awareness of abstraction, chose to work in narrative and confessional modes. Bringing these often-marginalised artists centre-stage, Hyman explores how works by artists such as Max Beckmann and Stanley Spencer, Marsden Hartley and Alice Neel, Charlotte Salomon and Henry Darger, express the possibility of a new kind of figuration, as well as a foundation for our questioning of formalist readings of 20th-century art.
Timothy Hyman trained as a painter at The Slade and was elected RA in 2011. As well as having ten London solo shows, he has published widely, including monographs on Bonnard and Sienese painting.
Roger Malbert is a curator and writer and Head of Hayward Touring at the Hayward Gallery. He has written for the TLS, Modern Painters, The Art Newspaper and is the author of Drawing People: The Human Figure in Contemporary Art.
“Both wonderfully concrete in detail and wide-ranging in scope, Timothy Hyman’s The World New Made constructs a new and convincing scenario for the history of 20th-century painting. Rejecting the straitjacket of modernist theory and the rigid model of abstraction, the author… posits the neglected realm of figure painting as the important vehicle of modernity in the recent past, reinterpreting the work of well-known artists like Chagall, Leger, Kahlo and Guston as well as reviving the careers of neglected ones like Ken Kiff, Bhupen Khakhar or Ida Applebroog.”
– Linda Nochlin on The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century.
This event will be followed by a book signing.
Doors open at 12.30pm. Unclaimed seats will be released to those waiting for returns at 12.55pm. No admittance will be granted after 1pm.
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