Painting People: Figure Painting Today 

Now available in paperback! After a century in which the lexicon of artists' materials expanded from the classic oil, canvas, stone and plaster to include photography, film, performance, found objects and concepts, the spotlight has finally swung back. A new generation of artists--as well as some who never abandoned figurative painting in the first place--is relishing the solitary, slow, subtle set of processes involved in not just painting, but painting people. They are choosing paint's unique ability to distill a lifetime of events rather than photography's glimpse of a frozen moment. Painting People, edited by the prominent London art historian and critic Charlotte Mullins, unites and contrasts the work of a key group of artists from around the world and investigates their richly varied accomplishments in lucid text with detailed commentaries accompanied by more than 150 reproductions. The list of contributing artists is stellar, ranging from photo-based painters like Luc Tuymans