Figurative Painting: Confronting the Crisis

Studies in World Art, Book 119

By: Edward Lucie-Smith

Narrated by: Joe Van Riper

This exhibition, based on a single, very personal and - dare one say it? - extremely distinguished private collection, tackles a large subject within a relatively small compass. It aims to examine a now universally recognized crisis, which is what is happening to painting as an art form.

Quite a large number of critics and curators have, in recent years, proclaimed that painting is dead: that attention must now be paid to other kinds of art - to video, to installations, to art works that are purely conceptual, to the ready-mades that only become art when they are placed in a particular context, in a museum, for example, or a Kunsthalle. Indeed, so much intellectual capital has now been invested in theories of this kind that it has sometimes been difficult for supporters of painting to get a hearing. When they do get a chance to speak, it is often evident that they are confused.

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