One of the irrefutable bestsellers of art history is Ernst Gombrich’s The Story of Art (1950). The book is a survey of the history of art from ancient times to modernity. It remains critically acclaimed after almost 70 years because it provides a singular explanation for the entire flow of art history.
In other words, Gombrich appears to provide one common theory that constitutes the backbone of why artistic style transitions from one to another. The author essentially argues that art history has always been an alternation between ‘art that attempts to represent the truth beyond the reality’ and ‘art that prioritizes references to the real world’. While the book provides a detailed analysis of many historically significant works and their artists, there is a metacommentary that seems to unite and explain the entire art historical discourse. The gift of the book is that it enables us to apply this theory to individual paintings and better understand which side of the duality each one lies in (the abstract representation or the figurative reality) or if it is at the verge of a moment of transition.
One philosophical theory that backs up Gombrich’s argument is ‘dialectical materialism’. Derived from Marx’s materialist approach, it is the theory that all things contain contradictory sides whose tension essentially becomes the driving force for change from figuration to abstraction, and vice versa.
For instance, prehistoric art was created with the purpose of representing religious and communal beliefs, which did not necessarily require a realistic resemblance to our world. The depictions of humans, most notably, are flat and stylized in ancient Egyptian or Greek pottery. While this is also due to the lack of artistic technological development, Gombrich attributes this style of art to more or less ‘abstract’ because the goal of these works were not realism. These artists were more like ‘artisans’ who were commissioned to create objects of social purpose. However, entering the 4th century BC, Greco-Romans began to gear towards a more realistic expression. The early Greek philosophical tradition known as Stoicism had its focus on humans rather than Gods, and this declined dependence on deity meant a stronger basis on reality and our surroundings. This, therefore, becomes reflected in the arts with a more realistic and observant figurative language.
In this sense, the return to figurative art is a cyclic move. After reaching the highest point of abstraction, the artistic will is confronted by the opposite will that drives us into the passage to figuration.
If one has been closely following the global art market in the past few years, it would be impossible to look over an interesting trend – figurative art is coming back. At the October 2022 London Frieze Masters, I am seeing artists like Philip Guston, Giacometti, and George Condo presented at the auction. These artists all work with human figures, forms we can recognize as resembling reality. This is a turnaround from a decade ago where the record-breaking sales were Rothko and Pollock. If the dialectical materialism theory is true, we must be in the midst of a period of transition.
More specifically, the popular mode of figuration in the art market seems to be a more surrealist style. At the 2022 Sotheby’s New York sale, rising artist Christina Quarles’ painting “Night Fell Upon Us Up On Us” (2019) was sold at a surprising $4.5 million, despite its “laughable” estimate of $600,000 to $800,000. In her works, we see elongated, distorted human figures with colorful flesh and a range of textures. While the painting is all about the physical body, it appears to follow a stream of unconsciousness and spontaneous decisions, leading up to a surreal outcome of postures pressing against and lying over each other. These biomorphic forms only slightly resemble reality yet they are predominantly dictated by the artist’s intuitive mode of expression, giving in to the surrealist impetus.
This trend seems to be proven by the recent wave of exhibitions as well. At the end of 2021, The Met and Tate Modern organized the exhibition Surrealism Beyond Borders in New York. The show explored the locally distinct yet simultaneous waves of surrealism movements across the globe. Last month, Pace gallery’s new space 125 Newbury also showcased an overwhelmingly surrealist figuration style. All of the works in the show were fleshy and anthropomorphic, using the physicality of the body to explore philosophical concerns such as decay, death, and ephemerality.
Following that, we see Jennifer Packer’s solo exhibition just opened at the Whitney in collaboration with London’s Serpentine Gallery. Alice Neel’s exhibition opened at the Pompidou center in Paris. Even in Philadelphia, there is the new Matisse exhibition, which we could call a hint of the resurging popularity of ‘figures’. Back in the 20th century, the return to figuration occurred over the course of a few decades in different places, but globalization and increased communication now seem to have synchronized this new pattern across the globe.
As this trend has become noticeable, many are suggesting possible reasons for the transition. Are we exhausted from radical abstraction? One plausible take is that after two years of isolation, people want to see people. Since art and psychological state are inherently interconnected, some argue that we turn to art in order to feel more connected at difficult times like COVID. A figurative art that makes clearer reference to the real world may feel more grounding to many. The transition may be taking a surrealist passage because altered representations of reality — for example, differently colored bodies, subversive use of texture and materiality — make it easier for us to digest figurations. That is, surrealism renders reality in a way that recalls another world or dimension, thereby offering a smoother stylistic transition to figuration.
To add my 5 cents to this debate, I suggest that the new buyers with the purchasing power are those people who grew up with Pop art. To trace back the first popularization of pop art is in fact very interesting. American pop art saw its heyday in the 1960s; its buyers grew up reading comics in the 1930s and 40s, not to mention the launch of Marvel in 1939. The comic figuration style in Pop art would have been familiar to the eyes of the people who grew up surrounded by comics and now had the wealth to purchase art. Now that we are in the 2020s, the pop art tradition has continued to be influential in the art market, and to the general public as an ‘easier’ type of art to digest. Having new generations of wealthy buyers introduced to the art market, figurative art may present a less difficult way of entering the art world for these people.
Looking back on the 20th century, we often mention Anselm Kiefer and George Baselitz as the pioneers of German neo expressionism. Philip Guston and Julian Schnabel are considered the American artists who led the American return to figuration in the 1970s and 80s. Which artists are at the forefront of our time? Or are they yet to come?
