Leon Golub1978

"Leon Golub is a leading exponent of history painting - painting as a narrative, symbolic expression of global social and political relations and of the realities of power. In this book, published to accompany a major travelling retrospective exhibition in Ireland, England and the United States, Jon Bird examines the artist's work from the classically influenced early paintings through depictions of conflict and masculine aggression to compelling images of the last two decades. Despite the widespread critical attention his work has received, the range and extent of his practice and its complex interweaving of the iconographic traditions of both high and popular art have not been properly examined. As a history painter, Golub is acutely aware of the antecedents to his own imagery and...