Figurative Art

About

For most of history nearly all art was figurative. Cave paintings of animals, Egyptian tomb reliefs, Greek statues and medieval altarpieces all show things that exist or can be imagined as existing. The word only became necessary in the 20th century, once abstraction offered a real alternative.

Figuration covers an enormous range. Albrecht Dürer's watercolour Young Hare (1502) records fur almost hair by hair, Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (1830) turns a street battle into allegory, and Auguste Rodin modelled rough-surfaced bronze bodies. In the 20th century figuration bent without breaking: René Magritte painted ordinary objects with deadpan clarity in impossible situations, and Georgia O'Keeffe enlarged flowers and bones until they verge on abstraction. While much of the avant-garde favoured abstraction, Alice Neel and Paula Rego kept the figure central, and by the early 1980s it had returned in force.