Figurative art
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Figurative art describes artwork - particularly paintings - which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational. The term "figurative art" is often taken to mean art which represents the human figure, or even an animal figure, and, though this is often the case, it is not necessarily so: {{cquote|Since the arrival of abstract art the term figurative has been used to refer to any form of modern art that retains strong references to the real world.
Painting can therefore be divided into the categories of figurative and abstract, although, strictly speaking, abstract art is derived (or abstracted) from a figurative source. However, the term is usually used as a synonym for non-representational art, i.e. art which has no derivation from figures or objects.
Until the arrival of radical early Modernism circa 1912, figurative art was dominant in Western art. By the late 1920s it had fallen deeply out of fashion in the art world, as various forms of Modernist (and later post-Modernist) abstraction became the dominant mode. Yet through major artists such as Balthus and Francis Bacon it retained an important place in Western art to the present day, and figurative painting is now slowly becoming accepted again in the contemporary art world from artists such as John Currin and Odd Nerdrum. [1] [Apr 2007]
