2022 is the year of celebration of figurative painting’s resurgence, arising from a need to recognize people, signs, or situations, inflated by this post-pandemic time.
The increased development of this trend results from a renewed focus on human experience and how it is reflected through the expression of the body ant its artistic renderings. This focus is a response not only to the existential suffering at global level brought about by the protracted isolation we all experienced over the pandemic, but also to international protests and discourse around police brutality and institutionalized racism, addressing questions of representation and visibility.
Art critic Enos Nyamor has pointed out in a recent review of the contemporary art world that “In the past year more figurative paintings and miracles of seduction, have revisited the convergence of Black bodies… There has been such flavour in colour, such prominence in features, in representations of the Black body – Blackness as a luminous texture on both screen and canvas.”
A current exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Black American Portraits, also spans over two centuries to the present day, and focusses on Black American subjects and narratives.
In our TWITTER PAGE - which we invite you to follow as it works as a radar that scans and skims the best news in the global press specialised in the art world and the art market - we have shared a few posts where the return of figurativism linked to questions of minority emancipation and Black art are in the spotlight. You may read them here and look forward to much more in our Twitts….SEE YOU THERE!
Galleries:
‘Questions Arise After Gallery Shows White Artist’s Photos of Black Suffering’: Meghan Boody’s images were initially produced in 2014 for a gun buyback program in New Orleans, but some expressed concerns when the works resurfaced this year in the context of a for-profit exhibition. By Elaine Velie, July 15, 2022.
Museums:
‘A Plagiarism Row Ignited Over Paintings of a Black Cowboy at the Guggenheim’: Now, Both Works Will Be Shown Side by Side. The controversy exploded after some noticed a Spanish artist's paintings of a Black cowboy borrowed directly from a film by Dayday. By Sarah Cascone, July 13, 2022 .
The younger generation is taking the reins when it comes to critical and politically engaged figurative art, addressing the present, and creating emotional links with the viewer. And, of course: if on one side the art world is embracing NFTs, on the other, we might feel a need for palpable ideas and artworks that explore real life, human connections, identity, feelings and the social environment in which we live.
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