Figuration Never Died by Karen Wilkin

with a Foreword by Bruce Weber

2020, The Artist Book Foundation, First Edition

This 120-page hardcover publication was published by The Artist Book Foundation to accompany the exhibition "Figuration Never Died: New York Painterly Painters, 1950-1970" (Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, October 24, 2020 - February 14, 2021).

Adventurous painting in New York in the 1950s was generally seen as synonymous with abstraction, especially with highly charged, gestural Abstract Expressionism. Yet some nonconformist young painters of the period carved out territory of their own. Although many had begun as abstract artists, they abandoned abstraction to make the world around them the basis of their work, painting from direct observation and memory, and often looking to the history of art as a starting point. Like the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, and in contrast to the Color Field and Pop painters, these artists remained enthusiastic about the physicality of oil paint, using a fluent, urgent touch to translate their perceptions into a variety of individual languages, almost all informed by the hand. This publication focuses on ten inventive artists from this generation, whom we could describe as painterly: Robert De Niro, Sr. (1922–2003), Lois Dodd (b. 1927), Jane Freilicher (1924–2014), Paul Georges (1923–2002), Grace Hartigan (1922–2008), Wolf Kahn (1927-2020), Alex Katz (b. 1927), Albert Kresch (b. 1922), Paul Resika (b. 1928), and Anne Tabachnick (1927–1995). They are linked not only by their mutual fascination with making reference to the visible, but also by their closeness in age, friendships, and shared experiences in the small New York art world of the 1950s and 1960s.