![]() ![]() The huge scale of James McGarrell’s paintings belie their profoundly personal content he turns majestic Baroque painting conventions upside down in order to express the present psychic instability with sweeping subjectivity. Others demonstrate quieter aims Milet Andrejevic invokes the noble tradition of Poussin in order to demonstrate continuity between past and present – thereby ennobling our day. ![]() Some, including Leon Golub and Nancy Spero, maintain history painting’s original sociological and didactic intent ultimately, they want to change the way we live and think. The seven artists who were presented in this exhibition used methods ranging from the heroic to the parodic, and they each responded to different aspects of the tradition. Artists who had ignored reigning formalist trends during the 1960s and 70s finally began to gain recognition and an art world context for their work. But rather, seekers after enduring truth through art once again began to make use of materials lodged in centuries of Western literature and art. The artist’s task no longer began with the tabula rasa - wiping the slate of history clean in the quest for more primal, profound forms of expression. Just as figuration had earlier returned under the guise of photorealism, so too did didactic public art. In the “postmodern” climate of the late 1980s, the taboos of earlier twentieth-century art were disintegrating. Just as Greek tragedy aims at effecting a catharsis that is meant to leave the members of the audience better human beings, so history paintings are intended to uplift the consciousness of the viewers. Human narratives depicted by means of spare, grandly paced compositions are meant to teach timeless moral truths. History painting is figurative and didactic, drawing its subjects from historical chronicles as well as from literature, the Bible and other sacred texts, and classical mythology. Defined in the 17th century as the highest category of painting, ranking above the landscape, genre, portraiture, and still life, the “grand style” is best embodied in the gravely dignified pictures of Nicolas Poussin and in works by 18th-century academic masters such as Jacques-Louis David. This exhibition was about a contemporary resurgence of “history painting,” a tradition long thought to have withered after the triumph of the avant-garde in the late 19th century. Tragic and Timeless Today offered some of the most talked about artists on the New York and international scenes along with painters enjoying somewhat quieter acclaim. This exhibition featured works by contemporary artists, whose work acknowledges this long-rejected tradition and who sought to modernize it through a variety of styles and strategies. The original practitioners of this noblest of genres, members of 17th – through – 19th-century European art academies, sought subjects in history, mythology, and contemporary life which taught universal, “timeless” truths about human nature their work aimed at public education rather than private enjoyment. Tragic and Timeless Today: Contemporary History Painting presents seven artists whose works in this exhibition extend and revise history painting, starting with its traditional definition – figurative, didactic, and grand scale.
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