the spectator | 7 september 2019 | http://www.spectator.co.uk 45
In The Olive Grove, 2019, ink and watercolour on Khadi paper, 30 x 43 inches
S OPHIE
CHARALAMBOUS
The Copper Island
11 September – 3 October 2019
Monday - Friday 10.00-5.30
Saturday by appointmentPainting
The new figurativism
Miguel Cullen
The figure is back. Faces stare, bodies sprawl,
fingers swipe, mums clutch, hands loll. The
Venice Biennale was full of it. After dec-
ades of being pushed to the margins, figura-
tive painting is once again dominating the
art world. Peter Doig, Alex Katz, Chris Ofili
and Jenny Saville head the sales at auction
houses, but there is a whole market of up-
and-comers snapping at the heels of these
established names.
How has this happened? Until quite
recently, the figure, like melody in music,
was associated with the most reactionary
elements within art. The body emerged out
of the second world war a wreck, blinking
amid the glare and slash of abstract expres-
sionism, pop art and conceptualism. Its ear-
nest presence went against everything that
was fundamental and fashionable in post-
Duchampian art with its commitment to the
sly and chin-strokey.
What changed was the demand to affirm
and bear witness to your identity and ‘lived
experience’. Suddenly the emotional and
communicative legibility of the figure
became an ally to the progressive cause. Aspale-faced invaders. Most of the inciden-
tal music (marvellously done) is played on
western instruments, cello, piano, guitar.
Not a didgeridoo in sight. The atmosphere
of the production is warm, relaxed and
very inviting but it’s more of a decorative
pageant than a gripping emotional drama.
Aldermen, civic grandees and heads of state
would enjoy it.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, the acclaimed
writer of scatty and disorganised comedies,
uses a creaky old device to get his fam-
ily drama, Appropriate, started. An elderly
father has popped his clogs and the relatives
show up at the house to pick over the rel-
ics and argue about cash. The first hour is
almost unbearable as we meet various mem-
bers of the Lafayette family who own a rot-
ting mansion in the deep south. ‘We’re in
Bumblefuck, Arkansas,’ says one.
Jacobs-Jenkins specialises in creating brit-
tle, stroppy, self-centred misfits who can’t
bear the sight of their fellow human beings.
Here we get half a dozen of these obnoxious
goons. Bitter Antoinette blames her brothers
for neglecting their dad, who suffered from
more than one mental illness. Beauregarde, a
smooth New York type, can’t stop his prick-
ly wife, Rachel, from locking horns with the
venomous Antoinette. Poor dippy Frank
has changed his name to Franz and hooked
up with a braindead vegan spiritualist who
calls herself River. ‘A walking rape fantasy,’
Antoinette terms her. Much of the dialogue
consists of screamed invective.
The first act climaxes with the discovery
of some photos of black men being lynched
in the 1930s. Dad was a closet racist, it seems.
But he was off his rocker as well, so it’s
unclear whether the images were acquired by
accident or design. The second act improves
greatly because the characters stop bawling
at each other and start to talk in conversa-
tional tones. The complexities of the plot set-
tle down and the texture of the story becomes
richer and more playful. Beauregarde discov-
ers that the racist photos are worth a fortune.
Should he flog them? Yes, say all the Lafay-
ettes. No one questions the morality of selling
sick curios to a far-right millionaire collector.
But the photographs abruptly vanish and
a comedy investigation ensues which culmi-
nates in a spectacular on-stage punch-up and
a hilarious visual joke that reveals Dad’s true
political sympathies.
By the close of the show, chippy Antoi-
nette (Monica Dolan) has become a figure
of stature and true suffering rather than
a vituperative sourpuss. Steven Mackintosh
manages to give Beauregarde unexpected
depths and Tafline Steen reveals that River
has more to her than New Age superficiali-
ties. It takes a while to get there but in the
end the play shows traces of magic.