A celebration of the richness of figurative painting over the last 100 years and a passionate critique of the accepted history of art in the 20th century. Figurative painting is due a reappraisal. In this passionately argued volume the distinguished writer and artist Timothy Hyman cuts a new path through the tangle of twentieth-century art. The World New Made explores the work of more than fifty individual painters, presenting a collective ''Resistance'' who together offer a human-centred alternative to the dominance of the Abstract or the Conceptual in conventional narratives of modern art. Structured not as a survey but as in-depth studies of more than 130 specific artworks, this lavishly illustrated book brings these often marginalized artists centre-stage: not just Alice Neel and Balthus, Max Beckmann and Frida Kahlo, but also Marsden Hartley and Charlotte Salomon, Bhupen Khakhar and Jacob Lawrence. A rich cast is brought to life, partly through their own writings. As the author argues, ''All across the world, isolated artists found new idioms for human-centred painting in the midst of modern life.

Autorentext

Timothy Hyman is an art critic and historian, as well as a painter. He was elected a Royal Academician in 2011 and is an honorary research fellow at the University of London. He is the author of Bonnard and Sienese Painting, both published by Thames & Hudson.

Inhalt

Introduction: Painting and Experience in the Twentieth Century

1. After Cubism: Reinventing the Language of Representation
2. After Expressionism: 'The New Thingness'
3. First-Person Painting
4. Beyond the Formalist Canon: Visionaries, Dreamers, Outsiders
5. After Abstract Expressionism: Towards a New History Painting
   Epilogue: Continuous Narratives