Figurative Painting Today - In Conversation with Julien Delagrange

Automat by Michaël Borremans, 2008

Collectors and curators have been clamouring for figurative art in recent years, as a generation of painters take a more traditional, representational approach to addressing major cultural themes in their work. But is figurative painting today merely a reactionary impulse, a kind of nostalgia for art that preceded modernism, postmodernism and the fragmentation in art-making that was ushered in by conceptual art? The broad brushstroke stereotype is that figurative painting is something traditional, even old-fashioned or obsolete. There is much more to it than that, argues painter and art historian Julien Delagrange. Figuration can serve as a vehicle for either historical or conceptual ideas, for art theory, in a way that’s more immediate than some of the more abstruse critical approaches of late 20th century. Read more here: https://fivebooks.com/best-books/figurative-painting-today-julien-delagrange/