Customer Reviews

British Figurative Art: Painting, the Human Figure (Pt. 1)

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BRITISH FIGURATIVE ART is basically a catalogue for an exhibition and as such there is a bit more curatorial edge than other surveys of current figurative painting. The British have always taken the lead in representing the Figure so it is with much interest that we get a look at what the new painters are doing. Not all of the painters are youngsters - there is a good smattering of the old guard like Kitaj, Hockney, Auerbach, Freud, and Weight to name a few. But the interesting contributors to this show/book are Jenny Saville, Peter Blake, John Wonnacott, Alison Watt, Euan Uglow, Celia Paul, John Kirby, Ken Currie, and Humphrey Ocean among some others who retain the figure intact but push the edge to keep the painting fresh while fairly traditional. The accompanying essay is mostly opinion rather than evaluation, but the writer enhances our looking at the few artists he describes.

British Art continues to amaze and set trends and this monograph certainly proves why.

This catalogue of the 8 August - 21 September 1997 Flowers East Gallery (London) exhibition is a visual who's who of contemporary British figure painters. The show of paintings of 56 artists including such luminaries as Lucian Freud, Paula Rego, Peter Blake, David Hockney, R.B. Katij, along with younger new talents such as Tai-Shan Schierenberg, and Jenny Saville. This book would delight portrait and figure painters, as well as fans of figurative art.