The Body's Contradictory Presence in Contemporary Art Amid Abstraction's Rise

A shift toward abstraction in painting appears to be replacing the recent revival of figuration, yet the human body remains central in other mediums. Anne Imhof's 2025 spectacle DOOM: House of Hope at New York's Park Avenue Armory featured live performers, highlighting this duality. Simultaneously, galleries still display numerous figurative paintings, complicating binary narratives about the body's importance. This cultural moment is defined by the body's simultaneous fading and persistent presence, influenced by pressures like AI and existential uncertainties about humanness. Recent films such as Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things (2023), Bertrand Bonello's The Beast (2023), and Coralie Fargeat's The Substance (2024) reflect anxieties about corporeal flux. Artworks like Josh Kline's bagged bodies and Ed Atkins's Tate Britain retrospective combine human elements with digital or abstract forms, responding to threats like the Singularity. Legal definitions of 'person' now include entities like churches and rivers, further blurring boundaries. Artists find relevance whether their work includes human bodies or not, as both approaches comment on contemporary predicaments. The analysis originates from the April 2025 issue of ArtReview.