The World New Made

Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century

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A celebration of the richness of figurative painting over the last 100 years and a passionate critique of the accepted history of art in the 20th century

Figurative painting is due a reappraisal. In this passionately argued volume the distinguished writer and artist Timothy Hyman cuts a new path through the tangle of twentieth-century art. The World New Made explores the work of more than fifty individual painters, presenting a collective ‘Resistance’ who together offer a human-centred alternative to the dominance of the Abstract or the Conceptual in conventional narratives of modern art.

Structured not as a survey but as in-depth studies of more than 130 specific artworks, this lavishly illustrated book brings these often marginalized artists centre-stage: not just Alice Neel and Balthus, Max Beckmann and Frida Kahlo, but also Marsden Hartley and Charlotte Salomon, Bhupen Khakhar and Jacob Lawrence. A rich cast is brought to life, partly through their own writings. As the author argues, ‘All across the world, isolated artists found new idioms for human-centred painting in the midst of modern life.’
Extent: 256 pp
Format: Paperback
Publication date: 2022-02-10
Size: 26.0 x 19.0 cm
ISBN: 9780500296530
Introduction: Painting and Experience in the Twentieth Century
1. After Cubism: Reinventing the Language of Representation
2. After Expressionism: ‘The New Thingness’
3. First-Person Painting
4. Beyond the Formalist Canon: Visionaries, Dreamers, Outsiders
5. After Abstract Expressionism: Towards a New History Painting
Epilogue: Continuous Narratives

Press Reviews

A thing of beauty
Sunday Times

Magnificently illustrated, this is art history at its most eye-popping and also – thanks to philosophical forays in which Hyman explores identity and the friction between self and society – its most brain-tickling
Observer (Peter Conrad's Books of the Year)

Magnificent ... will change forever our sense of the “story” of modern art
Gabriel Josipovici

Highly original ... there are brilliant insights and connections on every page
David Bindman

About the Author

Timothy Hyman is an art critic and historian, as well as a painter. He was elected a Royal Academician in 2011 and is an honorary research fellow at the University of London. He is the author of Bonnard and Sienese Painting, both published by Thames & Hudson.

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