figurative art
The rise of bad figurative painting
Galleries are awash with gimmicky paintings that look like they’ve been designed by algorithm. Dean Kissick on the rise of zombie figuration
Figurative painting is back – but how good is any of it?
An oxymoron is a clever gambit in an exhibition title. The Whitechapel Gallery’s Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium…
How to succeed in sculpture (without being a man)
Whee-ooh-whee ya-ya-yang skrittle-skrittle skreeeek… Is it a space pod bearing aliens from Mars? No, it’s a podcast featuring aliens from…
Why has figurative painting become fashionable again?
The figure is back. Faces stare, bodies sprawl, fingers swipe, mums clutch, hands loll. The Venice Biennale was full of…
The true face of Islam won’t be found in mosques or Muslim schools, but at the British Museum
In Britain today, Islam in its original essence is not to be found in mosques or Muslim schools, but on…
What's that thing? Britain's worst public art
Bad public art pollutes our townscapes. Stephen Bayley names and shames the worst offenders as he unveils the winner of The Spectator’s inaugural What’s That Thing? Award
The work of Elisabeth Frink is ripe for a renaissance
In a converted barn in Dorset, not far from the rural studio where she made many of her greatest sculptures,…
On the frontiers of figuration, abstraction and total immateriality
The artist, according to Walter Sickert, ‘is he who can take a piece of flint and wring out of it…
