James Harris For Tiffany

Many of Angela Fraleigh’s haunting and carefully staged tableaux feature women drawn from the annals of Baroque and Rococo “boudoir paintings” — titillating scenes meant to fan the ardor of the viewer. But she puts a contemporary twist on this iconography by giving her characters more agency than was typical of earlier eras.

In Fraleigh’s paintings, which can extend to eight feet, group scenes are typically set against a backdrop of lush painterly effects, ranging from pure abstraction to suggestions of flora and fauna. “I want my paintings to be magical and mesmerizing — seductive, while also inspiring the viewer to ask questions about who they are, where they are, what power they have available and how they might use that power,” the artist says.

Adds Ted Holland, a director at Hirschl & Adler Galleries, in New York, which represents Fraleigh’s work: “She examines the roles and depictions of women in art history — as subject, object, artist and muse — and repositions those often-marginalized figures at the center of her own paintings. The mix of figuration and abstraction allows the female figures to exist without the signifiers of time and location, ultimately giving the figures a new power and context.”

But Fraleigh’s practice also has a quieter, more intimate side. She is an exquisite draftsman who has focused on, among other subjects, the animal kingdom and the intricacies of women’s hair, and some of her smaller paintings have a quiet mystery reminiscent of Gerhard Richter’s tender portraits.

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Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.

Figurative art, as opposed to abstract art, retains features from the observable world in its representational depictions of subject matter. Most commonly, figurative paintings reference and explore the human body, but they can also include landscapes, architecture, plants and animals — all portrayed with realism.

While the oldest figurative art dates back tens of thousands of years to cave wall paintings, figurative works made from observation became especially prominent in the early Renaissance. Artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance masters created naturalistic representations of their subjects.

Pablo Picasso is lauded for laying the foundation for modern figurative art in the 1920s. Although abstracted, this work held a strong connection to representing people and other subjects. Other famous figurative artists include Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Figurative art in the 20th century would span such diverse genres as Expressionism, Pop art and Surrealism.

Today, a number of figural artists — such as Sedrick Huckaby, Daisy Patton and Eileen Cooper — are making art that uses the human body as its subject.

Because figurative art represents subjects from the real world, natural colors are common in these paintings. A piece of figurative art can be an exciting starting point for setting a tone and creating a color palette in a room.

Browse an extensive collection of figurative paintings on 1stDibs.