In the seventies, when I was a fledgling curator, any gathering of artists inevitably led to at least one acrimonious exchange about the exhaustion and imminent demise of figurative painting. At some point during these years, perhaps spurred by those discussions, a large, multi-gallery exhibition was organized to survey the current state of representational art. In spite of a selection that seemed determined more by a desire for quantity than quality, the show easily proved that news of the death of figuration, like that of Mark Twain, had been greatly exaggerated. You’d think that would have settled the question, but opinions on both sides remained entrenched and the arguments continued. Somewhere along the line, however, the emphasis shifted. Over the next decade or so, with the rise of postmodernism and its requirement that art tell stories and convey explicit political, sociological, or autobiographical messages, debates on the vitality and ev ...

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