New Figuration in Contemporary Painting and Metanoesis
This paper traces the emergence and development of new figurative painting, beginning with Luis Felipe Noe's Otra Figuracion movement in 1960s Argentina and extending to contemporary works such as Julie Speed's Under the Chinaberry (2012). The essay examines how new figuration moves beyond the postmodern allegorical frameworks described by Craig Owens, achieving what theorist Jan Esmann calls metanoesis — a state of non-conceptual awareness that transcends the mind's cognitive limitations. The paper argues that new figuration, through its use of mutually exclusive narratives or the deliberate absence of narrative, is uniquely suited to inducing this metanoetic experience, in contrast to abstract expressionism, which cannot achieve the same effect.
- Introduction: The Return of the Human Figure: Postmodern context and figurative revival introduced
- Origins of New Figuration: Otra Figuracion in Argentina: 1960s Argentine roots of neofigurative movement
- Contemporary Figuration and the Challenge to Postmodernism: Speed's work and postmodern allegorical critique
- New Figuration and Metanoesis: Esmann's theory linking figuration and metanoesis
- Metanoetic Mechanisms in New Figurative Painting: Narrative strategies that induce metanoetic awareness
- Conclusion: New figuration as ultimate metanoetic art form
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper moves chronologically and logically from historical origins to contemporary practice to philosophical theory, giving the argument a clear and purposeful trajectory.
- It grounds abstract theoretical claims — particularly around metanoesis — in a concrete artwork (Speed's Under the Chinaberry), making the analysis more tangible and credible.
- The paper draws on a focused set of sources and synthesizes them coherently, demonstrating how each contributes a distinct layer to the central argument.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective theoretical synthesis: it introduces a philosophical concept (metanoesis, from Esmann) and then retroactively applies it to contextualize both historical movements and contemporary works. This technique allows the writer to unify disparate examples under a single interpretive framework, which strengthens the paper's argumentative cohesion.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by situating new figuration against the backdrop of postmodern abstraction, then traces its roots to 1960s Argentina. It moves to a contemporary case study (Julie Speed) before deepening the theoretical argument through Jan Esmann's concept of metanoesis. The final sections explain the specific mechanisms by which new figuration achieves metanoetic effects, and a brief conclusion restates the paper's central claim. The structure is compact but complete, moving from historical context to theoretical resolution.
Introduction: The Return of the Human Figure
In the post-modern twentieth century, abstract expressionism and conceptualism dominated the visual art scene. Nevertheless, Tim Collins contended in 2009 that "the human figure holds an irresistible attraction for most people; it has from the beginning of time and always will" (Hart). This statement serves to support the recent revival of new figuration — or new pictorial revival — in painting.
Origins of New Figuration: Otra Figuracion in Argentina
Prior to focusing on contemporary figuration, it is worth noting that the beginnings of new figurative painting can be dated back to 1961 Argentina. Luis Felipe Noe's group, entitled Otra Figuracion, was seminal for Neofiguration and comprised artists who felt the need to augment their spectrum of expressive liberties with the freedom to represent figures. The painters made use of vivid coloring and vigorous brushwork to dynamically depict distorted figures of humans and animals. The paintings' content and form were united in an effort to embody a philosophy of necessary chaos — a contextual reaction to South American social tumult and political instability — while also emphasizing the modern world's incoherency and advocating for chaos as a worldwide organizational prerogative.
Contemporary Figuration and the Challenge to Postmodernism
Julie Speed's Under the Chinaberry, an oil on panel work from 2012, is exemplary of the return to figuration in contemporary art. Speed proposes a restoration of figurative painting that moves away from the postmodernist allegorical and deconstructive frameworks articulated by theoretician Craig Owens. Specifically, new figuration pushes beyond Owens's six fundamental traits of postmodernism and challenges art's predicament of having to "narrate its own contingency, insufficiency, lack of transcendence" (Owens 72). Moreover, new figurative paintings have gradually evolved from the modern conceptual perspective toward what might be deemed the pictorial — transcending the innate illustrative clause in favor of cognitive compression.
Conclusion
All in all, it can be asserted that new figuration marks the most recent significant installment of representational painting — one that moves beyond the confinements of modernism and postmodernism and functions as the primary resource for realizing the metanoetic ideal.
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