Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this book art historian James Hyman takes a fresh look at the crucial years after the Second World War, when attempts were made to revive European culture and debates about the future of art were fierce. The author proposes that realism in Europe during the early Cold War years occupied a radical vanguard position and stood in opposition to the competing claims made for American abstract expressionism. He examines two distinct visions of realism-social realism and Modernist realism-and explores their political implications and ideological significance.

Hyman argues that this Battle for Realism shaped and internationalized British art, and he addresses a range of artists from Modernist realists such as Auerbach, Bacon, Freud, Kossoff, Moore, and Sutherland to social realists Hogarth, de Francia, and the "kitchen-sink painters." He also illuminates the impact of foreign and émigré artists on British culture, addressing artists such as Giacometti, Guttuso, and Picasso, and examining the claims made for London as an art center to rival the Ecole de Paris and the New York School. Hyman draws on contemporary critical writing to give fresh insights into the art debates of the period and gives prominence to the central roles of the critics John Berger and David Sylvester.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

An important, original contribution to postwar art and cultural history that places British art within the context of Cold War politics, as has been done for American art by Serge Guilbaut and others. The battle was not between realism and abstraction, but between two competing types of realism: modernist and social. The battle involved not just stylistic preference but internationalism versus nationalism, Western liberalism versus communism, artistic autonomy versus overt politicization, and individual genius versus collective action. The key critics of the respective sides, and the heroes of the book, are modernist David Sylvester and Marxist John Berger. The artists they championed were Bacon, Coldstream, Freud, Moore, and Sutherland on the one hand, and the so-called "Kitchen Sink" painters, who are lesser known today, on the other. Modernist realism, characterized by a resistance to narrative and an emphasis on metaphor and allusion, asserted that art should express the freedom of the individual and present insights into the human condition. Social realism saw itself as part of a national tradition of illustrative reportage and advocated an accessible, popular art that would transform society. All levels. E. M. Lee University of Oklahoma

Author notes provided by Syndetics

James Hyman is a London-based art historian and. a lecturer, broadcaster, and curator.